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THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 



OP 



HEALTH AID HEALING; 



CONSIDERED IN 



TWELVE LECTURES, 



DELIVERED INSPIKATIONALLY, 



BY 



W. J. COLVILLE, 



IN SAN FRANCISCO AND BOSTON, DURING 1886, AND PUBLISHED BY 
URGENT REQUEST. 




CHICAGO: 

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO. 

1887. 



*KZ 4-6 



1/ 



COPYRIGHT, 

1887, 

By DR. M. E. CONGAR. 



All rights reserved. 



Printed and bound by Donohue & Henneberry, Chicago. 



PKEFACE. 



THIS little work has been prepared in great haste, 
amid a multitude of pressing duties. A selection 
has been made not quite at random from an immense 
mass of manuscript which has been steadily accumu- 
lating for more than a year under the reporter's hands. 
As the best reporters are not usually quite accurate 
and as extemporaneous speeches, even though delivered 
under inspiration, often contain some sentences which 
have too local, immediate and personal a bearing to 
render them valuable for permanent preservation, it 
has been found necessary to review the whole of the 
matter at first selected for this book with the utmost 
care, so as to eliminate as far as possible the less impor- 
tant and include the more important material. With 
a view to covering as much ground as possible in the 
fewest number of words, large portions of some lec- 
tures have been entirely omitted, and parts of others 
have been introduced wherever consecutiveness of ideas 
would permit. In a few instances a lecture appears 
almost word for word as it was delivered, but for rea- 
sons already stated, about twenty lectures have been 
employed in the formation of the twelve here pre- 
sented. The publisher cannot hope to have succeeded 
to any great extent in making a very valuable book for 
study and reference, still without in any degree overes- 
timating the value of its contents, it is only true to 
declare that the essential sum and substance of the 



4 PREFACE. 

teachings given in the classes will be found in the fol- 
lowing pages. Those whose minds are fertile as well 
as receptive, those to whom one idea suggests another 
and who have the gift of tracing conclusions to their 
sources, and following thought further than its out- 
ward dress can convey it, will doubtless be able to suc- 
cessfully treat themselves and others, if they carefully 
read and meditate upon the contents of this volume, as 
a perfect system of treatment is definitely outlined in 
its pages. The main object of the work is, however, 
to stimulate inquiry, awaken earnest thought, and 
remove prejudice and misconception. To the liberal, 
fair-minded and aspiring elements in the world's popu- 
lation, this little work is earnestly and lovingly dedi- 
cated and addressed. The prayer of the publisher is, 
that it may stimulate in some degree the noblest 
aspirations of men, women and children, to help each 
other and assist in some slight measure in turning the 
thoughts of old and young alike from the perishable 
unrealities of sense to the true realities of spirit. As 
the author is not a dogmatist, claims no right, and has 
no wish to force others to his conclusions, the hope is 
not expressed that his words shall be regarded as a cri- 
terion for the efforts of others. 

The reader's sincere friend, 

W. J. Colville. 
January, 1887. 



PERSONAL SKETCH 



OF 



W. J. COLVILLE'S LIFE AND LABOR. 



COMPILED FROM A NARRATIVE BY CHARLES BLACKIE MOXCRIEFF. 



W. 



J. COLYILLE, whose name has long been a 
household word on two continents, was born 
on the ocean between Europe and America, in the early 
morning of the 5th of September, 1859. His father 
was an Italian, his mother a Frenchwoman, connected 
with one of the oldest and most influential families of 
France. Her maiden name was Marie Lavinia De 
Mordaunt. Though born of parents of foreign race, 
his early life being spent almost entirely in England, 
W. J. Colville bears no very conspicuous trace of his 
descent, though on close acquaintance with him. no one 
can fail to detect traces of his origin, not so much in 
manner or accent as in character and disposition. In 
personal appearance, W. J. Colville is not singular, he 
is of average height, well framed but rather slightly 
built, with fair hair, blue eyes and a clear fresh com- 
plexion, though not apparently of a robust constitution. 
His temperament is wiry and elastic in the extreme ; 
he enjoys excellent health and has amazing powers of 
endurance. His early life was comparatively unevent- 

5 



6 PEESONAL SKETCH. 

f ul ; his mother passed to spirit life when he was an 
infant, his father, when he was only eight years of age. 
His childhood w r as spent chiefly in London and in 
Brighton, England, among persons of decidedly slender 
intellectual attainments and members of the Anglican 
State Church. From them he received no bias what- 
ever toward spiritualism or any progressive school of 
thought, but, without apparently any assistance from 
visible surroundings, his innate mediumistic powers 
showed themselves in a most remarkable manner when 
he was only five years old. At that tender age he used 
to see and converse with his mother, whom he could 
not have remembered physically, as she passed to spirit 
life when he was only a few weeks old, at most. Not 
understanding anything of spirit communion, and a 
beautiful lady appearing to him who told him she was 
his mother, looking perfectly natural to his vision, he 
believed the story of her death and burial to be a false 
report and imagined her to be yet living on earth. Not 
quite understanding how she came and left the house 
without observation, he spoke to his guardian about the 
matter, who being both an incredulous and superstitious 
woman, denied the possibility of the vision with one 
breath and expressed genuine fear with the next, for 
the child described his mother so perfectly that no one 
who had ever seen her could doubt that the picture 
was taken from life or some mysterious experience with 
the departed. These visions came and went for about 
a year and were then discontinued for no apparent rea- 
son and with no apparent cause. During the interval 
between iive and fifteen years of age, W. J. Colville 
was sent to school very irregularly, and received in a 
preparatory academy a rudimentary training in what 



PEES0NAL SEETCH. I 

are universally considered the necessary branches of 
education. Though possessed of much natural quick- 
ness of perception he was not a very apt scholar, as 
the routine of the schoolroom and the presence of a 
number of children exerted a deterrent influence on 
his intellectual development ; moreover, during those 
years he was not in the best of health and was fre- 
quently kept away from school for various reasons. 
Spiritualism was first brought to his notice May 21th, 
1874, by a placard announcing that Mrs. Cora L. V. 
Richmond (then Mrs. Tappan) would deliver an oration 
and poem under the influence of her spirit guides. He 
was attracted to the hall out of curiosity simply, but 
Avhile there became so vividly conscious of a spiritual 
influence working upon himself as well as upon the 
speaker, and coupled therewith, an intense desire to 
become an inspired lecturer and poet himself, that im- 
mediately on his return home after the meeting, he 
was influenced to recite poetry on topics suggested by 
persons gathered round the supper table, during 
which recitation he felt himself lifted out of his body 
into the air, though his physical frame remained so 
stationary that his feet seemed almost as though they 
were glued to the floor. From that day till the autumn 
of 1876 he exercised his mediumship in private, creat- 
ing much interest in the highest circles of society, for 
it was a truly amazing thing for an almost uneducated 
boy of sixteen to discourse off-hand on the profoundest 
themes presented to him by critical and specially in- 
vited audiences ; no matter what the subject might be, 
he handled it fearlessly and eloquently, and displayed 
such amazing knowledge on rare and intricate topics as 
to call forth the admiring wonder of all assembled. In 



PERSONAL SKETCH. 



February, 1877, lie was introduced to the publisher of 
the Medium and Daybreak, James Burns, of 15 South- 
ampton Row, Holburn. Mr. Burns called a meeting in 
the lecture room at the above address and published 
an account of it in the next issue of his paper, and also 
engaged W. J. Colville to deliver public addresses in a 
large hall on Sunday evenings, which addresses called 
together large and deeply interested audiences, and be- 
ing published sufficed to create so much interest in the 
youthful speaker that letters came from all parts of 
England making him offers to occupy the platform in 
almost every center where enterprising spiritualists 
were to be found. His career in England for a year 
and a half was a phenomenal success. Wherever he 
went he won laurels even from the opposition, and it 
was with many sad farewells and prayers for his speedy 
return that his many friends in England saw him de- 
part for America in October, 1878. Landing in Bos- 
ton October 31, he was met by representatives of the 
society of spiritualists assembling in Parker Memorial 
Hall, and was by them informed that his reputation 
had preceded him so as to win for him an engagement 
in that splendid edifice for four Sunday afternoons. 
His first public appearance in America was in that hall, 
on the 1st of November, 1878, before an immense audi- 
ence. From the moment he opened his lips his success 
was assured. The Banner of Light published glowing 
accounts of the proceedings and gave lengthy reports 
of his lectures from week to week. Engagements 
poured in from all parts of the country, and though 
Boston has been his headquarters ever since, and he 
has in that city a large constituency of regular listen- 
ers, who are unwilling to spare him for a single Sun- 



PERSONAL SKETCH. \) 

day, except during the summer vacation, he has trav- 
eled very extensively over this continent, speaking 
many times in nearly all the large cities and in many 
of the smaller cities, towns, and villages throughout 
the east and west. He has twice revisited England 
during the past few years, and has also paid several 
visits to Paris. Wherever he goes he draws the most 
thoughtful and enlightened elements in the communi- 
ties, never failing to arouse and sustain the deepest in- 
terest in the work he is so ably inspired to carry for- 
ward. 

Perhaps the most noticeable of all his triumphs was 
his reception in California, last summer. The Gold* n 
Gate, published in San Francisco, and the Carrier 
Dove, published in Oakland, paid him the highest of 
high compliments, while the San Francisco Chronicle 
and other leading daily papers gave long and compli- 
mentary notices of himself and his work. One of the 
most astonishing features connected with his speaking 
is his utter insensibility to fatigue in the discharge of 
his arduous and multiple duties. While in California 
he frequently spoke thirteen times a week and grew 
strong upon it. It is almost impossible for any person 
attending a very few of his lectures to form a just idea 
of his style and manner on the platform. He has no 
fixed style, but vividly portrays the individuality of 
the inspiring influence at the time. On some oc- 
casions he remains almost motionless, at another 
time he speaks with great fire and energy and in- 
dulges in rapid and intrepid movements on the stage. 
Sometimes his accent is the purest English, at other 
times it is decidedly French or German. From this 
cause alone have arisen the most divergent accounts 



10 PERSONAL SKETCH. 

of his appearance and manner while speaking, all of 
which were founded on some particle of fact. It is this 
amazing versatility in style and the almost unlimited 
range of subjects with which he deals, that causes those 
who know him best to compare him to an inexhaust- 
ible fountain of ideas and language. To question the 
fact of inspiration in his case is to present to the world 
an unsolved problem, for the solution of which no 
known rule exists, or at least none can be found. His 
prominence as a teacher of metaphysical healing leads 
us to enquire how he became so able and influential an 
exponent of Mental and Spiritual science as applied 
to health. The facts are very simple and easily 
told. When a child his constitution was delicate, and 
he was often in the doctor's hands, but never under 
any circumstances can he remember deriving the slight- 
est benefit from any material remedy. Whenever 
notice was taken of his ailments he grew rapidly worse, 
but when left to himself an influence would come to 
him and restore him, but he must be left entirely 
by himself, unmolested by the thoughts as well as 
the bodily presence of others, to reap the full advan- 
tage of the subtle ministrations of this unseen power. 
Sometimes a strange person would heal him without 
knowing it; and often he would be led to certain 
places and people by an instinct similar to that which 
leads a cat to search for catnip when feeling Undis- 
posed. When about sixteen years of age, he became 
closely connected with a young gentleman who had 
studied Theosophy and whose natural healing gifts were 
truly marvelous, and at that time he gained a pretty 
thorough initiation into various occult systems of 
medicine. Noting, however, that mesmerism is a dan- 



PERSONAL SKETCH. 11 

gerous power, his mind reverted to what is now called 
Metaphysical healing, and though he does not accept 
all the theories of the Christian Scientists, and posi- 
tively opposes Mrs. Eddy's views on spiritualism, as set 
forth in her remarkable work, Science and Health, he 
found so much in the metaphysical theory in harmony 
with his own intuitive knowledge and actual experi- 
ence, that yielding to the earnest solicitation of many 
friends, and the strong pressure of a spiritual influence, 
he undertook the work of instructing classes of 
students in Spiritual science, giving them thorough 
practical information and suggestions and always on 
moderate and generous terms. Though fully alive to 
the advantages of a good social position and the 
wherewithal to carry on necessary work in this world, 
and possessed of great business ability in many direc- 
tions, W. J. Colville cannot be called mercenary by 
any one who knows him. He never demands extor- 
tionate prices for his services, and is always ready to 
welcome those who cannot pay to all his meetings 
without money and without price. In private life he 
is many-sided. He has great conversational powers, 
and can make himself very agreeable, but frequently 
he does not try to entertain. This may be largely 
accounted for by an instant's consideration of his man- 
ifold public and other duties. His sphere is public life 
and literary labor, and he really has little if any time 
for social gossip. Not withstanding this feature of his 
character, few people have more warm personal friends 
than he, and as he enjoys the society of cheerful per- 
sons of both sexes and all ages, goes to places of amuse- 
ment whenever he has time and opportunity, he can- 
not be said to be anything .of a recluse. In appear- 



12 PERSONAL SKETCH. 

ance and manner lie is decidedly French, and has all 
the quickness and vivacity of that nation. As a writer 
he is fully as effective as a speaker, and writes as 
rapidly as he can talk, ideas pouring in faster than a 
pencil can write them. The above may be taken as a 
very meagre pen picture of one of the most remarka- 
ble public speakers of the age, one who has doubtless a 
great future before him, for though he has been before 
the public a considerable number of years, and has 
won a world wide reputation, he is still in the bouy- 
ancy of youth, and looks so juvenile on the platform 
that many persons find it difficult to believe he is as 
old as the years since his birth have made him. His 
greatest virtue in the eyes of many is the whole-souled 
interest he takes in the work of others, and his utter 
absence of jealousy or rivalrous ambition, but then, 
those who stand at the head in any line of effort, have 
small incentives to envy their brothers or sisters. 



LECTIJEE I. 



MIND CURE : ITS FACTS AND FALLACIES. INCLUDING A 
FRIENDLY REVIEW OF A LECTURE BY DR. STEBBINS, 
PASTOR OF FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH, SAN FRANCISCO, 
UPON THE SUBJECT. DELIVERED IN ASSEMBLY HALL, 
SAN FRANCISCO, SUNDAY, SEPT. 26, 1886, BEFORE AN 
IMMENSE AUDIENCE OF REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS. 

THE very title of our lecture should be sufficient to 
prove to all strangers who may be here that we 
do not endorse all the vagaries of the Mind Cure sys- 
tem, and that we do not stand pledged to declare that 
Mind Cure, as it has been ordinarily interpreted and 
expounded, is the universal panacea, or that all the ills 
to which human nature is or can be subject can be dis- 
posed of by a few simple applications of what Dr. 
Evans has called mental medicine. Mind Cure always 
appears to us a very inadequate expression. We use 
the term Spiritual Science, as being far more express- 
ive, or even Mental Science, if you like the word 
"mental" better than "spiritual," though it positively 
expresses less. The word " mental " literally signifies 
intellectual, while the word "spiritual" goes deeper 
into the soul of man, and treats upon the purely moral 
and affectional qualities of the spirit : the word " men- 
tal " being confined to what you may term the mind or 
intellect, signifies something different from what we 
term the spirit, which expresses the moral intuition 

13 



14 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

rather than the intellectual elements in human life. 
Spiritual Science relates to the whole of life and will : 
to narrow it down to Mental Science is to lower it, as 
Spiritual Science is a much ampler term, while Mental 
Science is much more than simply Mind Cure. Mind 
Cure gives a great many people the idea that you 
undertake to cure insanity and nothing else ; and 
while it is true in a certain sense that all diseased 
people are insane — because sanity is health and insan- 
ity is the absence or reverse of health — and while 
those who heal by mental methods ought to make a 
specialty of healing those whose disorders are avowedly 
mental, and whose ailments have baffled the skill of 
physicians and shown themselves invulnerable to all 
the attacks made upon them by Materia Medica, at 
the same time it appears to us that Mind Cure suggests 
the idea that there is no science about it and that there 
are no scientific qualifications for healing required on 
the part of those who pose before the world as mental 
healers. Now, nothing can be farther from the truth ; 
for if true Mental and Spiritual Science is to take the 
place of the old medical systems, if instead of a Materia 
Medica we are to have spiritual remedies, those who 
are to be the successors of the old-school physicians 
will not be ignorant and unenlightened people, who, by 
some peculiar form of incantation, can perform won- 
ders, but rather do we need the- most learned men and 
women, the wisest, the most level-headed, the most 
generous, pure-minded and spiritually-unfolded, to em- 
bark in the great enterprise of the physical, mental 
and moral redemption of humanity. 

There are some people who suppose what is popu- 
larly termed Mind Cure is something that anybody and 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 15 

everybody can learn in a few lessons ; and while a 
medical student has to go to college and study for 
years and pass difficult examinations before the faculty 
will award him a diploma, it is supposed by many that 
any ignorant person, any charlatan or imposter, can 
pose successfully in the role of a mental healer, and 
that those indeed who are genuine healers, so far as 
there can be any mental healing at all, are illiterate 
persons, the popular impression being that illiteracy is 
no disqualification for mental healing. 

Now we do not for a moment deny that an illiterate 
person, a person who has never passed through college, 
or a person who has never had what may be called a 
good liberal education, if well disposed, generous, kind- 
hearted, sympathetic, and spiritually-minded, can do 
a very large amount of good. But such a person is 
highly cultured in the spiritual faculties. A person who 
is highly moral, very generous, sympathetic, and in 
love with humanity, one who will work at any sacrifice 
to himself for the good of the world, is one who has 
an education or an unfoldment far beyond any educa- 
tion that can be gained by merely attending school or 
college. There are many learned men with their 
degrees and diplomas who are lacking altogether in 
the finer sensibilities of human nature. There are 
manv doctors who go forth from the colleges full of 
nothing but pride and conceit. They have, it is true, 
a smattering of medical information, but are anything 
but moral and anything but spiritual, and are the very 
people whom you would not like to introduce into the 
bosom of your families if you really knew them. 
There are many people everywhere who have been 
highly educated, who have graduated with honors from 



16 LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

the most renowned universities in the world, who 
instead of being spiritually-minded, are carnally-minded 
to a remarkable degree .; and as it requires a spiritual 
person, one who is noble-minded, one w T ho has some- 
thing to commend him to humanity far in advance of 
outward attainments, to touch the deepest springs of 
human nature, we should decide that even an illiterate 
pauper might be in a very true sense educated or un- 
folded far more than a literary man who was lacking 
in all that is finest and noblest in human development. 
Therefore do not understand us to say that an illiter- 
ate person cannot be a successful healer. But while 
many illiterate persons are successful healers, those 
illiterate people are people who have a great deal of 
character, a great deal in them which is truly admirable 
on account of their unusual moral and spiritual quali- 
fications ; and this spiritual education, which raises one 
above the literati of wordly renown, must be regarded 
in an especial sense as a revelation of God to the world. 
But leaving this matter of literacy and illiteracy, 
in the scholastic sense, and proceeding to the question 
of w 7 hat the necessary qualifications really are for a 
good moral or spiritual scientist, we should say that no 
education can be too rich and varied, no knowledge 
can be too profound, no intellectual culture and no 
experience can be too great to duly qualify one to 
enter into what may be termed the metaphysical pro- 
fession. We consider it a very great ^mistake when 
people suppose that in the far East and in Palestine, 
in the days of Buddha and of Jesus, that the greatest 
healers and teachers of the period were unlearned peo- 
ple. It is true they may have gained their knowledge 
intuitively rather than through collegiate courses ; it 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 17 

is true they may have been enlightened by a purely 
spiritual development of their intellectual understand- 
ing, and may have had, therefore, an illumination 
rather than an external education, but it is emphatic- 
ally stated in the New Testament that it was a great 
surprise to all the people round about that Jesus was 
eminently literary. They inquired, "Whence hath 
this man letters, seeing he has never learned \ " What 
does it mean to have letters, but to be well up in all 
literary matters, to be an authority on literary subjects, 
to display literary, even scientific knowledge? 

You are told that when Jesus was twelve years of 
age, he entered into the temple and disputed with 
learned doctors of the law who constituted the Sanhe 
drim, the very highest council in Israel, and made an 
impression of the profound est nature by answering 
the wise men's questions, and also asking them ques- 
tions in return. Their wonder and astonishment was 
that his erudition was so perfect, his knowledge so 
profound. You are told plainly in the records that 
Jesus, that great and wonderful man, who, between 
thirty and thirty-three years of age, performed those 
wonderful cures that defied duplication by his content 
poraries, though he had possibly never studied in the 
colleges of the world, was nevertheless highly edu- 
cated. He had gained his education somewhere and 
somehow, for it was the surprise of the learned men of 
the day that he knew so much ; the marvel of the peo- 
ple at large was that he was so literary, being only the 
son of a village carpenter. 

We are told in Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia," 
that when Gautama Buddha, who afterwards became 
the Savior of Asia, was brought before the most 



IS LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

learned men in his father's kingdom, though only eight 
years old, he knew more of science, of mathematics, of 
history, more of the deepest subjects which the learned 
were wont to discourse upon, than his preceptors; the 
sign and seal, the credential of his divine mission was, 
that he knew more than any one else in the kingdom. 
No premium whatever has been placed upon ignorance 
in the Jewish or Christian Bible, nor in the great rec- 
ords of the far Orient ; but on the other hand, those 
who have been called and have shown themselves able 
to respond to the call to teach and to heal have either 
through ordinary avenues of instruction received infor- 
mation of a literary and scientific kind, or in some mys- 
terious manner, commonly styled marvelous or mirac- 
ulous, through the opening of their spiritual under- 
standing, have come to a knowledge of the truth in all 
its ramifications and applications. Therefore we main- 
tain in this age that we do not endorse a company of 
ignoramuses who pose in the role of teachers and heal- 
ers ; we do not desire that superstition and quackery 
should prevail over reason and common sense. We do 
not endorse those movements that decry learning and 
extol ignorance, but on the other hand we declare that 
in the future, when the world becomes more spiritual- 
ized its universities will teach far more than they teach 
now, professors will know vastly more than they know 
now, the successors of the modern clergymen and doc- 
tors will be far more learned men than any who have 
yet occupied pulpits or adorned the medical profession ; 
and as the word doctor really means a teacher (it is 
simply a Latin word meaning a teacher), the original in- 
tention was that the doctor should educate his patients 
instead of treating them in some mysterious manner 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 19 

with minerals and drugs. The very fact that doctors 
of medicine were spoken of, as well as doctors of divin- 
ity, proves that the word doctor was intended to con- 
vey the idea that patients were to get well through 
their own understanding of truth, by their acquain- 
tance with the laws of being, not by continual dosing 
and experimentation. 

If, therefore, the true position of the modern doc- 
tor is understood, and any man or woman is entitled to 
write M.D. after his or her name, they should be teach- 
ers of medicine — not administerers of drugs, but teach- 
ers of the people in the science of health. We are told 
of an Oriental monarch who kept continually by his 
side a celebrated physician whose work it was always 
to keep the king in health, and who would be decapita- 
ted if the king fell ill, but had large revenues as long as 
the king remained in good health. While the penalty 
of decapitation we should not advise for infliction upon 
the doctor who allowed his patient to become ill, we 
can see far more reason why a doctor should be paid 
for keeping persons well than permitted to run up long 
bills, the longer the illness lasts, the longer and the 
more the patient surfers, the longer time it takes the 
remedies to work. Doctors nowadays are very fre- 
quently paid lor killing patients, or, at all events, for 
not prolonging their lives or even ministering to their 
comfort. Among the funeral expenses the doctor's bill 
is generally a very large item, and many a poor widow 
left with children dependent upon her, unless she has to 
do with a very benevolent physician, has found it very 
hard work to satisfy the claims of the doctor and the 
undertaker, who are usually very closely allied in their 
business — so closely that an outsider might almost sup- 



20 LECTUEE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

pose they were partners. The doctor's bill and the un- 
dertaker's bill are often sent in together ; and as the 
doctors of all countries have grown rich upon the ail- 
ments of the public, as they have grown rich by keep- 
ing people always in their hands, as the family physician 
has been often only the family doser, the family exper- 
imentalist upon the lives of its members, a panderer to 
the family hysteria, there can be no doubt whatever 
that in the light of modern civilization, which educates 
every boy and girl in the country, that professors of 
the science of health, teachers of the science of being, 
those who might well be called Ontologists, will soon 
take the place of the Physicians and Druggists of past 
days. Wherever civilization spreads the druggists begin 
to make their living out of Soda Water rather than drugs. 
Many Apothecaries have already learned that in a 
healthy and intelligent population they must depend 
very largely upon their soda water fountain for their 
revenue, and there are many of the best druggists in 
the country who make much of their profit upon the 
fancy articles they sell, such as toothbrushes, soap, 
sponges and other things people continually need, and 
which metaphysics has not attempted to do away with. 
Wherever persons become enlightened they take less 
and less medicine. One of the most influential and 
learned men in America and a great ornament to the 
medical profession, Oliver Wendell Holmes, made a 
statement almost equivalent to the following : That if 
all medicines had been thrown into the sea it might be 
good for man but bad for the poor fishes. There are a 
great many doctors who by diligent study have come 
to the conclusion, and have openly made the statement, 
that the less medicine taken the better. Such doctors 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 21 

are of course in no sense quacks or impostors. Those 
honorable and scientific gentlemen who adorn their 
profession are those who instruct their patients how to 
keep well a great deal more than they advocate dosing 
or taking medicine. If you take a really learned doc- 
tor's advice it will often prove well worth a great many 
times his fee. If you observe those rational laws which 
the doctor lays down for you concerning diet, exercise, 
fresh air and proper moral conduct, it may have been 
a very good thing for yourself and your family that 
you called in an intelligent, scientific man when you or 
any one else felt indisposed. If a doctor is really quali- 
fied, if he is what the term "doctor" implies, he is a 
teacher of health and a teacher of morals ; such a doc- 
tor, though he be ever so wealthy, though the revenue 
he draw from his profession be ever so great, must be 
numbered among the instructors of the rising genera- 
tion and the benefactors of the less well informed. 

We therefore utter no words of contempt or abuse 
when we speak of wise and noble men who abound, 
we are happy to say, in the various schools of medical 
practice, in all of which we have found the most intel- 
ligent and liberal-minded persons of our acquaintance. 
But those fussy and superstitious doctors who are 
always dosing their patients are a nuisance to society, 
and even though they have a diploma they are the 
greatest quacks of all. 

We affirm that Mind Cure in and of itself means 
simply that the mind must cure whatever is wrong both 
in mind and in body, and that the universal specific is 
mental and not physical. " Who shall minister to a 
mind diseased ? " is the question continually asked by 
sufferers. How long will physicians continue to treat 



22 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

ailments which are purely mental as though they were 
bodily ? is a question that comes up in all our popular 
literature. "We need greater sagacity and a much 
wider sweep of intelligence to reach the mind than 
merely to reach the body; the endeavor to tinker up 
the flesh while the mind is ill at ease is of no use what- 
ever. The endeavor to cure people of dyspepsia when 
it is not their food that disagrees with their stomach, 
which is not out of order except as an after conse- 
quence, for their ailment proceeds from mental unrest, 
from grief, disappointment and unhappiness, from 
something that weighs upon the mind, a heavy load 
upon the heart, a sting of conscience rebuking them 
for an error, is all in vain when you rely on pills, pow- 
ders and balsam. If you could get at the reason why 
people suffer from dyspepsia, if you could get at the 
reason why good food makes them sick, or remains 
undigested, if you could get at the reason why they are 
unhappy and unable to obtain relief, you would then 
be able by dealing with and removing the cause of the 
unhappiness to heal them. If you could not remove 
the thorn from the mind, which afterwards produced 
the semblance of a thorn rankling in the flesh, you 
would at least be able to do what a spiritual teacher 
was able to accomplish in his own case — help them to 
receive from heaven grace sufficient to bear it. 

If you could reach the innermost springs of human 
nature, find out why people are miserable and touch 
their mental and their moral condition, it would be 
surprising to see how many wasting lungs would cease 
to waste, how many pallid cheeks would begin to glow 
again with the bloom of health, how many dull, sad 
eyes would be lighted with the iires of youth, happi- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 23 

ness and peace, how many poor, miserable dyspeptics 
would enjoy their food, and find that anything that 
was fit for man's consumption agreed with them. 

If we can touch the springs of action, and go di- 
rectly to the sources of trouble and annoyance, by 
reaching the realm of causation instead of forever deal- 
ing with effects, we are able to change the condition 
of a person because we change the source whence that 
condition flows. 

Mind Cure, even in its humblest forms, even in its 
seemingly unscientific application, has, without doubt, 
produced results far beyond any that could be pro- 
duced by any form of drug medication or mineral 
administration. Not only is this fact claimed for 
Mind Cure by those who are its acknowledged advo- 
cates and defenders, but in Dr. Stebbins' recent lecture 
be made no attempt to deny it, while a recent writer 
in one of the popular magazines, Dr. Buckley (in 
The Century, June, 18S6), who is a Christian minister, 
declared that cures which were performed either by 
faith, by prayer, by spiritual mediums, or through 
visits paid to the shrines of Romish saints, were all of 
them in many instances well-authenticated cases of re- 
covery. 

There is no doubt either in the scientific or religious 
world today that what is called Mind Cure is a great 
fact, and where Dr. Stebbins seems to us to have made 
a misstatement is, in supposing that this wave of mental 
healing is a mere transitory appearance, and that while 
it is here today it may not be here tomorrow. Dr. 
Stebbins and all other ministers and (to use his own 
language) all doctors may make up their minds that it 
has come to stay. It has always been in the world, 



24 LECTUBE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

but in ages of religious darkness and superstition it has 
been shrouded, and never until quite recently taught 
as a science to the world in general. 

All the charm said to attach to the relics of saints 
and to objects blest by ecclesiastical dignitaries, all the 
charms said to attach to certain holy places, holy wells 
for instance, answered very well as an evidence of 
supernaturalism to those closely wedded to the theo- 
logical beliefs of the mediaeval centuries ; and until 
public school education was offered to every child in 
this republic, until people demanded the why and 
wherefore of everything, until miracles were chal- 
lenged and the realm of the supernatural was fearlessly 
invaded by the scientists of this generation, a weird 
and fantastic garment of mystery was naturally woven 
around all cures that were performed without the aid of 
ordinary material assistance. But now that all these 
facts, gathered up from the East and West, the North and 
South, from recent times and from remote ages, are 
brought to bear upon the great law of the universe, and 
people ask, " What is the reason for this ? " we know 
there cannot be an effect without a cause, there must 
be a way of reducing all these facts to a science, there 
must be a law that lies behind them all. People no 
longer credulous as they formerly were, no longer blind 
believers in the church as they have been until recently, 
no 'longer prepared to believe that God acts spasmodi- 
cally and intermittently, as though the universe were 
run by machinery which God put into it at first, and 
wound up, and with which he occasionally interferes ; 
no longer ready to believe there is a peculiar sanctity 
attached to certain externals : the world today says it 
must know the law which governs all these phenomena, 



LECTUBE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 25 

the intelligence of today says there must be a reason 
for this, and there is just as truly a law governing 
spiritual or mental action which operates in answer to 
prayer, resulting in a faith cure, or in a cure which is 
the result of drinking the water of a holy well or 
touching a cup that has been blessed either by the 
Pope or any other ecclesiastical dignitary, as there is a 
law which causes an unsupported body to fall to the 
ground. * 

It is today admitted in the scientific world that 
prayers are answered ; that there is a result following 
upon earnest faith ; but as yet jihysical science has 
been the only science taught in the Academies, while 
theology, instead of being a divine science, as the word 
signifies, has been relegated to the realm of the un- 
knowable, the mysterious, the mythological and super- 
natural. 

We believe in prayers and we know they are 
answered; but God answers prayer as much in har- 
mony with his divine and immutable law, as He causes 
the grass to spring up and the fields to be covered 
with ripened grain in obedience to an immutable law. 
We know there is a result which follows earnest faith, 
as much in harmony with the constitution of the uni- 
verse and in accordance with fixed laws of being, as 
the phenomenon of sunrise or of sunset. We know 
those events take place. The mind has in all ages 
asserted its sovereignty over sense, but naturally rather 
than supernaturally. 

We are now beginning as a people to see that there 
must be a reason why for everything, that God is not 
an occasional interferer with the regular course of 
natural events, but is the very life, inspiration and soul 



26/ LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

of all law and of all universal government. True 
spiritual or mental science (science meaning knowledge 
upon this subject of the power of the mind over mat- 
ter) will lead in years to come to the practical under- 
standing, not of physics, but of metaphysics, to the 
erection of colleges in which spiritual science will be 
taught, and the relation of the soul to the body 
explained, as today you are taught the relation of one 
part of the physical organism to another in anatomi- 
cal and physiological classes. The time is coming 
when mental and spiritual science will be taught every- 
where, when physical research committees will be com- 
posed of men and women whose qualifications have 
made them peculiarly adapted for the Psychological 
Professor's Chair. There will be Psychological chairs 
in all the world's universities ere long ; professors of 
Psychology, which means the science of the soul or 
spirit of man, will become as common in every hall of 
learning, as a professor of chemistry is now well nigh 
universal. 

If any one imagines that this mental cure move- 
ment, vague and chaotic though it may be as yet, is 
going to die out as the blue glass movement did, refer- 
ring again to Dr. Stebbins's similes, we tell them 
there is no analogy between Blue Glass and mental 
science, as true Mind Cure acknowledges the whole of 
the mind of man, not merely one-third of it. If you 
are going to advocate a light and color system of cure, 
you certainly cannot see it perfected if you believe in 
blue glass only ; you must have red glass and yellow 
glass as well as blue, for one primary color is not likely 
to do all the good which can be accomplished by the 
three primary colors acting in concert. We may have 



LLCTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 27 

a light and color cure, such as Dr. Babbitt so learnedly 
elucidates in his " Principles of Light and Color,*' a 
most interesting illustrative work, but to attain it we 
must employ all the colors when w T e apply color to 
healing of disease. If we employ music, as some 
French scientists have done with considerable success, 
we should never consider we were justified in applying 
one-third of the octave and leaving two-thirds of the 
scale entirely out of our calculations. 

The Blue Glass movement may be called a " craze," 
because it recognized one of the primal colors and 
ignored the other two ; and while blue no doubt has a 
quieting effect upon the nerves, and blue, being the 
color of the sky above you is symbolical of constancy 
and truth, and is most eloquent in the language of 
colors, whether it be the blue of the turquoise, which 
has always s} x mbolized fidelity, or the blue of the for- 
get-me-not in the floral kingdom, w T hich has always 
been regarded as a token of constancy to one's friends, 
blue cannot and does not meet more than one-third of 
the necessities of human nature. Thus the " blue glass 
cure," passed away ; it was not possible for it to act 
alone without its comrades of the prism. 

If pure white light is administered, and is allowed 
to flow through all channels of communication with 
the mind ; if the influence of all colors and all sounds 
upon the human mind and nervous system is under- 
stood — and we all know that both sounds and colors 
have immense effect upon both men and animals, and 
even upon the growth of plants — we have no hesi- 
tancy in saying that a scientific system can be built 
upon a recognition of the curative and sanative influ- 
ences of fight, sound and color. But to take one por- 



28 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

tion of sound or one portion of color and say that 
fragment will cure everything, is to be a crank and 
ride a hobby, for every one is a crank and rides a 
hobby who believes that what he chooses to take 
up with will do all the work of healing, while he leaves 
more agencies untouched and disregarded than he 
acknowledges or advocates. 

In Mind Cure as well as in physical science we must 
learn to be m-clusive rather than ^-elusive. Bigotry 
and narrow-mindedness will never succeed in doing 
more than making ripples upon the surface of human 
thought ; but those who go deeply into spiritual science 
will find at length the philosopher's stone and the elixir 
of life, which the Rosi crucians and other mystics in 
Europe were so eagerly hunting for in the seventeenth 
century. It will never be found in the mineral world, 
nor yet in the vegetable or animal kingdom; but 
humanity will discover it in the spiritual nature of 
man ; they will find it cradled deep in the soul which 
is immortal. When you are told in the first book of 
the Pentateuch that God said unto the human beings 
whom he had formed in his own image : " Subdue the 
earth ; I have given every green thing and every living 
creature into your charge," does not the author of the 
narrative really put this sentence into the mouth of 
the Eternal : " I have given you a body which contains 
all there is in the three kingdoms of nature ; I have 
given you a complex organism to control, and if you 
can control that perfectly, you will be the acknowl- 
edged lord and sovereign of nature in the physical 
domain." 

And so in every age it has been found that those 
who have had power over wild beasts, who have 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 29 

charmed the deadly serpent, have been those in whom 
the lower nature was held in abject submission to the 
higher ; but the moment a man loses control over him- ' 
self, immediately he lets the lower passions rule, then * 
the lion can devour him and the serpent can sting him 
to death. There is no safety for man, no immunity in 
the midst of danger, until he arrives at that point 
where he is able to command and control everything 
beneath what is divine in himself by his own divine \ 
strength. Such is an epitome of the teaching of all 
sages. 

So we say perfect health and perfect happiness are 
always results of spiritual culture, and that as the spirit 
rises superior to the flesh, as the divine nature in man 
asserts its sovereignty over the animal propensities, as 
man says in his higher nature to the brute within him, 
" Lie down and obey me," as he compels every mortal 
passion to yield to the supremacy of mind, to that 
extent and no farther will he be exempt from all danger 
and from all suffering. 

You are told in the olden days that Elijah raised 
to life one who was apparently dead ; that when he 
stretched himself upon the widow's son, who appeared 
dead, and looked up earnestly to heaven, calling upon 
the Eternal Being, the spirit came back into the body 
of the child, and he restored the boy to his mother. 
There is, perhaps, no adequate reason for believing 
the boy to have been really dead ; the final link which 
bound the spirit to the flesh may not have been snapped ; 
the probabilities are that the boy was in a deep trance 
and past all ordinary methods of restoration; those 
who gathered round him, including his poor, heart- 
broken mother, believed him to be really dead, and he 



30 LECTUEE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

would soon have been dead in reality if it had not been 
for the prophet's touch and divine power. Elijah was 
a man of like passions with humanity indeed, but one 
who controlled those passions ; a man who could stand 
alone on the top of Mount Carmel challenging eight 
hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and of the Groves, 
and compel them to behold the sovereignty of divine 
truth in the midst of an idolatrous and licentious com- 
pany. If he was thus able to stand alone in the inter- 
ests of eternal truth, daunted by no superstition and no 
danger, such a man could surely perform a wonder 
others were unable to attempt. 

When we are told of the self-denying life of Jesus, 
of his long fasting in the wilderness, of his encountering 
and overcoming temptations in their most subtle and 
attractive form ; putting every carnal appetite under 
his feet, together with all vain-glorious desires and 
selfish ambitions, refusing to use magical power to 
minister to sense, refusing to make a spectacle of him- 
self by performing an ostentatious miracle, refusing to 
make compromises with the powers of darkness and 
thereby try to serve God with only half his heart, 
and the world, the flesh and the devil with the other 
half — it is no wonder to us that, having reached those 
spiritual heights on the summit of which he declared 
that his kingdom was not of this world, refusing all 
solicitations to head an army and figure in the role of 
a persona], warlike Messiah, that he not only spoke 
about putting all lower things beneath his feet and 
standing erect in true, spiritual manhood, but proved 
that he had gained a complete victory over him- 
self and thoroughly tamed his own passions by con_ 
trolling those of others. It takes a greater than 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 31 

an Alexander or a Cagsar to bid temptation and disease 
depart, and even to raise to life again those who are 
apparently dead. So when the disciples of Jesus, 
unable to come up to his standard in the performance 
of noble works, asked their Master, " Why cannot we 
do what you have done and what you have told us we 
also can accomplish ? " He rebukes them not only for 
want of faith, but tells them of the necessity of prayer 
and fasting, i.e., of continual aspiration toward heaven 
and perpetual reining in of the lower instincts as 
necessary prerequisites to the exercise of such highly 
spiritual powers. 

If we take notice we shall observe that all through 
the New Testament record those who could perform 
such wonderful works were men who would dare every- 
thing in the interests of a righteous cause. It was no 
light thing to be followers of the persecuted Jesus in 
the first century; it was no fashionable and conven- 
tional move to join one's self to a Christian society 
then ; it rendered one liable to be persecuted on all 
hands, to be relentlessly pursued by foes even to the 
death; the primitive Christians would fight for their 
religion and for their conscience at any sacrifice, and 
by the spiritual victory which they gained over pride, 
self-interest and worldly ambition, they developed the 
power which made them in a special degree healers and 
teachers of mankind. 

There is no other road to equalling the wonders of 
past ages except by treading in the pathway of self- 
sacrifice in which the prophets, Jesus and the disciples 
trod. 

When the quetions is asked, What then are the 
qualifications for real work in a metaphysical direc- 



32 LECTURE BY W, J. C0LVILLE. 

tion, what are the qualifications for real healing \ wo 
answer: You must heal yourself of pride, of selfish- 
ness, of carnality, put all Mammon worship beneath 
your feet, in place of the death of sin rise to a life of 
righteousness; overcome all desire for personal ag- 
grandizement, and cultivate a supreme wish to benefit 
all mankind. Before you can be truly a healer in the 
highest sense of the word, the understanding of truth 
and the living a life in harmony with it, knowledge of 
truth and the love of it are both necessary. The true 
metaphysician, whose works follow him and prove the 
divinity of the science which he professes, is one 
who has first healed himself of all inordinate love of 
self, for then only can he go forward and heal his 
brethren. 

The power to teach is the result of the understand- 
ing of truth ; the power to heal is the result of the 
fervent love of truth coupled with love to all humanity. 
You may teach others, and yet yourself be a cast- 
away, as Paul expresses it ; you may address the intel- 
lect, you may expound spiritual verities and may help 
others to understand truth, but you will never be a 
successful healer until you are a spiritually-minded 
person. 

So long as people go into the work of healing for the 
sole object of making money, so long as they desire 
the gift merely as a means of livelihood, so long as 
there are any Avho take up mental healing simply for 
the sake of -tiding over a difficult crisis in their financial 
career, but would willingly lay down the work as soon 
as they have piled up money enough to live without try- 
ing to help their fellow-creatures, there will always be 
some Avho make metaphysical healing appear ludicrous, 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. 66 

as such persons will be noted for their failures rather 
than for their successes. But all persons who go into 
the work with a sincere and honest desire to bless man- 
kind, and while they do not refuse to be compensated 
for their time and services by people who are well able 
to pay, would never turn a poor patient from their 
doors because he had not the fee in his hand to pay for 
a treatment, must succeed. A true healer never refuses 
to give instructions gratuitously to those who are un- 
able to pay, for true spiritual workers, while they ac- 
knowledge that the laborer is worthy of his hire, when- 
ever they confer blessings upon others only allow them- 
selves to be compensated by people who can afford to 
pay, and then only for the purpose of meeting neces- 
sary expenses. All true workers would go on working 
and working quite as fervently if they came into the 
possession of immense wealth, as those who love their 
work, however they may be circumstanced financially, 
do it for the love of it ; willing workers, and these only, 
are true mental healers or true spiritual scientists in this 
or any age, in this or any country. 

We hear it continually said that mental healers are 
mercenary, that people go into the work only to make 
dollars and cents. JSTow, while a great deal is exagger- 
ated and a great deal is only unkind comment on the 
part of those who are more mercenary themselves than 
the mental healers whom they accuse, still there is no 
question that the very large prices charged for teaching 
and the very heavy fees exacted for treatment, and the 
attitude w r hich many have taken toward the poor and 
needy, has brought an immense amount of reproach, 
some of it merited, upon what has been termed mental 
science, mind cure or metaphysical healing ; but mental 



34 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

healers as a body are certainly not an especially mon- 
ey-grubbing section of the community. 

The use of the term Christian Science by Mrs. Ed- 
dy and her followers has naturally led people to sup- 
pose that the power to heal is a secret confided to some 
woman who gives particular interpretations of Christ- 
ianity — a secret, moreover, to be obtained by pay- 
ment of three hundred dollars for an ordinary course 
of instructions, and two hundred dollars more for a 
supplementary course, before people can exercise genu- 
ine healing power. Mrs. Eddy styles herself the dis- 
coverer of metaphysical healing. She is in truth no 
more so than is any person who has discovered meta- 
physical healing, which is only the discovery that mind is 
sovereign, and that the body can be made completely 
subservient to it. Mrs. Eddy no doubt w T as cured in 
the way she states in her book. She no doubt did find 
that all the methods of material science were unavail- 
ing in her case, and then a spiritual revelation came to 
her, and Divine power healed her as she was reading 
her Bible. She no doubt has received spiritual illum- 
inations which have opened her understanding to see 
the nothingness of the vain show of matter, and the ex- 
clusive reality of spirit. But for any persons to imag- 
ine that they must make pilgrimages to Boston and sit 
at the feet of Mrs. Eddy in order to understand spir- 
itual healing, is to be lamentably deluded. Any per- 
son who imagines there is any Mecca or Jerusalem 
upon the earth, or any one teacher who has in her 
keeping a special secret from God which she can sell at 
a large figure to those to whom she chooses to impart 
it, is the victim of a pernicious form of superstition. 

When you are sitting in your own private room, 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 35 

waiting for the spirit, the spirit can come to your attic 
or to your cellar as well as into Mrs. Eddy's class-room, 
though if you feel you are not so intuitive as to be able 
to receive the truth direct from the source of all life, 
that your relations with the spirit world from various 
causes are not so intimate as the relations of some 
others, then as it is God's will that we should help 
each other, by joining classes and sitting at the feet 
of teachers and holding communion with those in 
the higher life who have graduated beyond this 
earthly school, you can obtain very great assistance 
and help both from those who have cast off the 
material form and those who are yet subject to 
earthly limitations. It is an absolute fact that those 
whose clairvoyance is undoubted, and who have given 
the most satisfactory tests of their power, have seen 
spiritual helpers by the side of those who were engaged 
in a work of benevolence. Your " departed friends " 
do assist you, whatever may be said to the contrary. 
We do not say that all who derive assistance from their 
spirit friends know it; but when some who do know it 
hide a truth simply for the sake of satisfying the de- 
mands of what they think to be the influential part of 
society, the really influential, whether in the Christian 
church or anywhere else, will never approve of coward- 
ice or hypocrisy. If you believe in Spiritualism and 
pretend you do not, there is not an honorable member 
of any Christian church who will respect you when 
he finds it out; but if you go before the world and 
state your convictions and say frankly, "I believe 
this, I feel so and so," letting the public know that you 
have the courage of your convictions, there may be 
people who will say, " I do not agree with the opinion 



36 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

of such and such persons," but all honest persons will 
add, " I respect their honesty and admire their straight- 
forwardness." We would far rather have our opinions 
contested and be considered in the wrong theoretically 
than be considered either cowardly or dishonest, as we 
must be if we cloak honest convictions. In the present 
state of the world's attitude toward all psychological 
subjects, to draw a veil of mystery over any work in 
which you may engage, to hold back facts with which 
you may be acquainted, may answer very well for those 
who seek only to sway the uneducated, but it will 
never take with enlightened people who have as much 
intellect as yourselves and as much power to under- 
stand and appreciate spiritual truths as you have. 

Wherever metaphysicians endeavor to hold them- 
selves aloof from others, organizing themselves into 
sects, and try to make out that all the power they have 
is locked up in some little narrow combination, they 
will find that truth will be like the wind, to which 
Jesus likened the Holy Spirit, when he said, the wind 
bloweth wherever it listeth, and you cannot tell whence 
it cometh or whither it goeth, so is every one who is 
born of the Spirit. 

We do not use the term Christian Science ourselves. 
Why? Because there are many of our Jewish friends 
who have not the slightest intention of giving up the 
grand old religion of Israel, who are today performing 
cures metaphysically, and doing fully as much good as 
anybody who has taken a course in Christian Science 
either from Mrs. Eddy or any one else. Many of our 
friends, who have been in our meetings regularly, are 
Jews, and intend to remain so, and these have found 
nothing whatever in metaphysics which has shaken 



LECTURE BY VV. J. COLVILLE. 37 

their faith in the religion of Israel. There are also 
many who are members of Christian churches, and who 
intend to keep up all their church associations, who 
have found nothing whatever in metaphysics out of 
harmony with the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. 
If we use such expressions as spiritual science, spiritual 
knowledge, mental science, mental knowledge, we shall 
express the true idea, viz., that the unfoldment of 
spiritual and mental powers, not the learning of a form, 
not the ability to repeat off in a parrot-like manner a 
number of formulas, constitutes ability to heal, which 
is a result of one's spiritual and mental culture, allying 
one with the higher powers of the spiritual universe. 
We need to know that the true metaphysician is one 
whose own mind, whose own spiritual and intellectual 
nature is in the ascendant, for we have power to help 
others into the higher chambers of being only when we 
ourselves have risen. Spiritual and mental science 
means nothing more than spiritual and mental culture. 
People calling themselves Christian Scientists, declaring 
that it is almost a sacrilegious act, almost idolatrous, 
to advocate even fresh air and proper attention to 
dietary laws, are simply absurd. Jesus said to sev- 
eral whom he healed, " Go wash and be clean ; " and 
while the spiritual significance of those words is 
undoubtedly far deeper than the letter, and referred 
to the washing of all impurity from the mind, not 
merely to taking a bath, yet we all know the cleanli- 
ness enjoyed by the Mosaic law contributed very 
largely to the health of the Israelites, in the midst 
of nations suffering from dreadful diseases, and such 
is always the case where sanitary laws are observed. 
But we must always remember that results on the 



38 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

external plane are the natural outcome of our mental 
and spiritual state ; that as we become more and more 
allied to spiritual realities, more and more mental, 
moral conquerors over sense, we become more and 
more scrupulous in all that appertains to health, even 
on the material plane. Instead of the body being ne- 
glected, and mental science meaning that you should 
ignore the body and all demands of the body, what is 
meant by pure metaphysics is that mind should be 
assigned its rightful place over sense ; mind must be 
supreme and matter its servant ; the body is the instru- 
ment of the soul, but the soul must be the exclusive 
performer upon the instrument. 

We have nothing to say in reply to Dr. Stebbins' 
lecture, only that to our way of thinking he did not 
go far enough into the science and philosophy of the 
subject ; he does not appear to have thoroughly 
grasped the great spiritual principle which underlies 
Mind Cure, and we do not wonder if he and many 
others have not, for it is very rarely that mental heal- 
ing is so presented to the world that it can gain ac- 
ceptance at the hands of the thousands who have been 
educated in the prevailing materialistic (even though 
religious) modes of thought. 

When the New Testament is interpreted in har- 
mony with reason and the higher intuitions of man we 
shall regard perfect health as the reward of perfect 
purity; and when we thoroughly understand meta- 
physical healing we shall know that we must pay close 
attention to our every thought, and that only by moral 
purity can we advance to the perfection of external 
blessedness ; we shall know that we must cure the 
mind of jealousy, pride and carnality, finding an outlet 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 39 

for error and an inlet for truth. To get people into 
such a way of thinking and acting that they think 
more of the welfare of their fellow -beings than they do 
of their own private interests, will be to bring nearer 
the glorious time when health, happiness and virtue 
will be forever united upon the eartht 

True metaphysical science is the basis of all reform. 
The true metaphysician is found in the Kindergarten 
and in the Moral Educational Society ; the true meta- 
physician is found attending to the culture of good 
habits in those whom he treats and educates ; but 
instead of whitewashing the sepulchre or making clean 
the outside of the cup and platter, patching up the 
body while the mind is yet in error and the morals are 
yet debased, the true mental healer affirms the spiritual 
to be the realm of causation, the realm whence all 
words and actions spring: " as man thinketh, so he is." 
As long as we entertain pride, vain-gloriousness, 
selfishness and sensualit}^, so long shall we be the vic- 
tims of suffering and death ; but so soon as we think 
only of righteous and humane thoughts, and get our- 
selves into true and loving relation with God, the 
Infinite Being, shall we rise superior to all lower 
things, ride safety over the tempestuous billows of the 
outer world into those calm havens of perpetual peace 
and rest, where beatified spirits, their earthly pil- 
grimage safely ended, work in the enjoyment of a rest 
that is forever active, in a state of being where there is 
no fatigue, no sickness, no decay and no death, through- 
out the boundless ages of eternity. 



LECTUEE II. 



WHAT IS METAPHYSICS, AND WHAT IS MEANT BY METAPHYSI- 
CAL HEALING? 

THE public is frequently told by professors of meta- 
physical healing that it is necessary for. students 
to join private classes for instruction in the science; 
and to the end of supplying such instruction many 
teachers are constantly forming classes, admission to 
which can be obtained usually on payment of a fee 
ranging from a few to a few hundred dollars. Mrs. 
Eddy, the well-known leader of the Christian Science 
Movement, president of the Metaphysical College in 
this city and pastor of a religious society, claims to 
have discovered metaphysical healing, and consequent- 
ly many persons suppose it necessary to go to her or 
one of her certificated students to obtain the •needful 
instruction in the event of their desiring to become con- 
versant with the theory and practice of the science. 
In Science and Health, a large volume written by Mrs. 
Eddy, and in the Journal of Christian Science, a 
monthly magazine enjoying a considerable circulation, 
the ground is taken that this particular lady is the 
originator of the metaphysical movement in this 
country, and the almost, if not altogether infallible ex- 
ponent of metaphysical science. This position is, of 
course, fiercely antagonized by many who claim to pos- 
sess fullv as much power as Mrs. Eddy or any of her 

40 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 41 

students in the direction indicated, and who have not 
taken a lesson of her or any of her students, or read a 
line in her book, or seen a copy of the official organ of 
the college over which she presides. As we are con- 
tinually besieged with questions as to our position with 
regard to Christian Science, not being ready to adopt 
the title Christian Scientists ourselves, we deem it ad- 
visable in this preliminary or introductory lecture to 
give once for all our plain, unvarnished views and state 
clearly our position in this matter. Your present 
speaker, in common with many another naturally sen- 
sitive and impressible individual, has from earliest 
childhood been the subject of intuitive guidance, and 
when at the tender age of five years he became con- 
scious of realities not discernible by external sense, a 
revelation came to him instinctively that ailments of 
every kind were aggravated by dwelling upon them, 
and were in most instances speedily overcome by for- 
getting their existence, and directing thought else- 
where. At that early age, then, a child grasped the 
first principle of metaphysical healing, and that with- 
out books, teachers, or the slightest assistance from the 
conversation or opinions of the persons with whom he 
lived, all of whom were destitute of any such percep- 
tions or beliefs. Mrs. Eddy says a light broke in upon 
her mind after a very severe illness, while she was yet 
almost at death's door, and that the New Testament 
narrative was the source whence her mind received its 
first bent in the direction of Christian Science. This 
we can readily believe, and can also easily understand 
how peculiarly susceptible a religiously disposed mind 
is to receive as literally true the New Testament anec- 
dotes at a time when ordinary physical means have 



42 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

been tried and found utterly wanting in a time of 
direst need. So far we go heart and soul with Mrs. 
Eddy; but our proposition is to dilate upon the univer- 
sality of experiences and powers similar to hers. We 
propose therefore to take a leaf from her bound book 
of counsels and acknowledge principle rather than 
person in all that appertains to true spiritual science. 
Mrs. Eddy is one out of many who have been blessed 
with remarkable spiritual experiences, but it is not to 
her or to any other individual who now lives on earth or 
who ever has dwelt on this planet that we must turn 
for infallible light and guidance. Men and wo- 
men are but windows, through which the light 
of immortal spirit shines, and the less restrictive 
our opinions are concerning that part played by single 
individuals in the accomplishment of human happiness 
and welfare the nearer we grow to spiritual truth and 
mental liberty. Having said thus much on the score 
of the source from which metaphysical science is de- 
rived, let us now proceed to give our reasons for pub- 
lishing this present series of discourses. We have 
already alluded to the prevalent statement of teachers 
that they must organize private classes for instruction. 
We will add that we do so ourselves, and for the fol- 
lowing reasons. 

On the public platform and through the agency of 
the printing press we can give a fair general outline of 
what we teach in private; but the special advantage of 
private classes is that they afford opportunities for 
elaborate discussion of the views advanced by means 
of questions and answers. These cannot be embodied 
satisfactorily in a printed address, because no two 
minds need exactly the same explanations, and there- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 43 

fore in the classes no two persons ask precisely the 
same questions. The subject is infinite, and touches 
upon every conceivable topic of interest to mankind ; 
and were the readers of these pages present in a private 
class composed of smart, intelligent, inquiring minds, 
they could not fail to be impressed with the great ad- 
vantages to be gained in the class-room, almost unpro- 
curable outside of its precincts : for the class instructs 
itself ; one member enlightens another, and there can 
be no true class unless it be made up of men and 
women, yea, and children also (for children are the 
aptest scholars), who come together not simply to 
listen to a lecture, but for mutual edification. The 
lecture-hall and the class-room are not rivals, and one 
can never do the work of the other. The lecture-hall 
is for the multitude, the class-room for the few, i.e., for 
the few at a given time, though for all at some time ; 
as the science of being, ontology, as it is sometimes 
termed, is a science for all mankind, it is a gospel, good 
news for all people. The term Metaphysics is very 
old, and has been much used by scholars to define a 
system of reasoning prevalent among the ablest Ger- 
man thinkers, and powerfully proclaimed by the re- 
nowned Bishop Berkeley, an Englishman in the last 
century. 

Though much mystery has been attached to the 
word by controversialists, it is itself a very simple and 
innocent expression, literally signifying mind over mat- 
ter ; and just here now that we have arrived at a lucid 
definition of the word, let us proceed to our task of 
further explanation by considering frankly and fairly 
the relative positions of the two great schools of think- 
ers into which the world which realty thinks at all is 



44 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

divided. There are really only two prominent and 
distinctive schools of philosophy extant, the metaphysi- 
cal and the physical, the materialistic and the spiritual- 
istic. The metaphysical school properly includes all 
who believe spirit to be the dominant force in the uni- 
verse, all who believe in the sovereignty of mind and 
the subserviency of matter ; thus all consistent Theists 
are metaphysicians, in that they attribute all material 
effects to spiritual causes. Swedenborg states the 
metaphysical position tersely and accurately when he 
declares that the world of spirit is the realm of causa- 
tion and the material world the region of effects. The 
great question of the day among students is whether 
does matter evolve or generate spirit, or mind beget 
matter. There may be many great and almost insupera- 
ble difficulties attendant upon such an inquiry ; we do 
not propose in this address to bewilder our hearers or 
readers with an incomprehensible succession of argu- 
ments and counter arguments on this knotty point ; we 
will content ourselves with calling your attention to a 
few prominent facts which throw light upon the in- 
quiry and tend to simplify the elucidation of the vexed 
problem. Let us begin with the old adage or axiom, 
" Out of nothing, nothing comes." We do not wonder 
at the contempt and ridicule poured upon certain as- 
sumptions of narrow-minded theologians by modern 
skeptics, for theology has been so debased in many 
quarters as to give utterance to the absurd statement 
that the world and all that is in it was made of nothing. 
To say the world was created by God is not ridiculous, 
for by God is meant Infinite Spirit, Eternal Mind, 
Supreme Intelligence ; but to say God made 
it out of nothing is- to speak so foolishly as 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 45 

to bring Theism into ridicule and contempt. Were 
theologians consistently to affirm that God made 
all worlds out of his own idea, and thus return to the 
wisdom religion of antiquity from which the doctrine 
of emanation sprang, theological utterances would be 
intelligent and credible, and happily a move is now 
being made in that direction, especially by the liberal 
clergy of all denominations. The homogeneity of the 
substance of the universe is a doctrine very generally 
proclaimed by science ; the atomic theory, now put 
forward with much vigor by some of the most brilliant 
intellects on the planet, leads to the conclusion that 
there must be a condition of being absolutely homo- 
geneous ; all heterogeneity is therefore simply phenom- 
enal and transitory, while the true essential substance 
of being is self-existent, eternal, immutable. The 
theory of atoms is very well so far as it goes and may 
commend itself forcibly to the intellect ; but we beg of 
you to ponder well this startling truth in connection 
with it, viz., that the existence of atoms is purely hy- 
pothetical and conjectural; they are reached only 
through mental processes of inference and deduction ; 
as they make no appeal to any one of man's five bodily 
senses, no believer in their existence ever professing to 
have encountered one in any of his physical researches, 
they are mentally apprehended, certainly not physi- 
cally comprehended ; they have no relation to sight, 
hearing, touch, taste or smell ; they exist therefore in 
the minds of professors, and so far as the schools have 
any knowledge — nowhere else. 

This consideration leads us to make the following 
declaration as a basis for our metaphysical temple: 
Atoms are known only to mind ; therefore they are 



46 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

mind and in mind, and being mind they have become 
known to mind, mind taking cognizance of mental en- 
tities which the physical senses fail to perceive. Let 
us see where this proposition lands us. Atoms are 
conscious, intelligent ; they think, feel, love ; they are, 
in a word spiritual ideas, living, moving thoughts ; and 
being such, when their motions are witnessed through 
their subordinates the oft-mentioned molecules, they 
display powers of choice, preference, selection, etc. Let 
the proposition be once admitted that behind the mov- 
ing, shifting scenes of matter mind is operative, ac- 
knowledge mind as primal and causal, and you will no 
longer be bewildered as you watch the evident intelli : 
gence and sagacity displayed by the individual monads 
as they evince selective appreciation and in their mar- 
velous movements show attractions and antipathies 
similar to the emotions which sway humanity. 

Let us try to think of God as the Eternal Infinite, 
the grand and glorious sum of all life and intelligence, 
the infinite ocean of uncreated Being in which we live 
and move and have our being. A personal or anthro- 
pomorphic idea of Deity is foreign to metaphysics and 
also foreign to pure Theism, unless the personal idea 
have reference to the microcosm ic revelation to the 
human mind of the macrocosmic infinitude of Being. 

We, as individual souls, live in the Infinite Soul; 
we are within the embrace of infinitude. God's life 
embraces, encircles us ; it is the only life there is, and 
our life is included in the infinite whole. We are then 
in the Eternal, and can never get outside the Infinite ; 
there is no time outside of eternity; there is no space 
outside of universal substance. Infinite substance, in- 
finite being, not infinite space, is the metaphysical 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 47 

idea; for what is space but the imaginary distance be- 
tween two points, two objects or two ideas? The idea 
of space is itself a conception born of impotence and 
ignorance ; for there is no space, there is neither void 
nor vacuum, anywhere. Spirit is omnipresent, and 
where the senses fail to discern anything, and the 
human intellect fails to realize anything, the nothing- 
ness supposed to exist in the universe is the meas- 
ure and limit of man's mortal and finite thought of 
being. 

How ridiculous it is when we think of it to try and 
conceive of empty space, unoccupied distance. How far 
more rational to dwell upon the omnipresence of spir- 
itual reality. You will doubtless have observed ere this 
that in speaking of Deity and the soul we have used the 
word "being," but not "existence;" the two words to 
us convey totally different meanings: to be is greater 
than to exist ; that which is, is greater than what exists, 
for to exist is to stand out apart, away from something 
else. Being is spiritual, existence is eternal; being can 
never be destroyed or lessened, existences come and go ; 
they are here today and gone tomorrow; therefore 
there is a subtle means of reconciling creation out of 
nothing with metaphysical truth, but in order to do so 
} r ou must make two words out of one, and nothing 
must stand no thing. Things may be brought into 
existence out of what is superior to all things, if by 
things you mean objective existences palpable to ex- 
ternal sense. A thing is generally considered neuter; 
chairs and tables are things, but it would be an insult 
to call a human being a thing, as a human being is in- 
finitely superior to a thing, and it is always an insult 
to compare an individual to what is inferior to him or 



48 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

herself; using the word "thing" then for an inani- 
mate, outward, perishable object, a something modeled 
from mind, but only mind's expression on the lowest 
plane of its operations ; things are produced out of no 
things but out of a power, force, energy, impulse, will, 
which can create and destroy things by remodeling as 
it pleases the something which for want of a better 
term is commonly called the force of nature. That 
something is self -existent is an axiom ; the puerile in- 
quiry, if God made everything, who made God, is un- 
answerable ; for the word " God,'- meaning Infinite 
Goodness, the Good One, stands in the English lan- 
guage for eternal and self -existent Spirit. Power is 
Eternal and Infinite, and Power in its last analysis is 
Deity. 

Now let us proceed to a definition of the individual 
human spirit. Every human soul is a manifestation 
of Deity, a living thought of God, a divine idea ; the 
divine soul or essential ego called by Oriental mystics 
the atma, is the divine of man, the immortal entity 
which never changes, and can never lose its individu- 
ality. This divine spark of the infinite fire of 
life is all there is of man in the image of God. 
The divine soul is the center round which all else 
revolves, and thus we are justified in speaking of the 
absolute deathlessness or immortality of the soul only 
as we regard each separate spiritual unit or essential 
atom of life distinct from its external relations and 
environments. Immortal mind is the consciousness of 
the soul, its understanding of itself and of its relation 
to eternity. Mortal mind is an anachronism, as all 
mind is immortal ; it is, however, employed by some 
as a convenient figure of speech ; to be more definite 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 49 

and explanatory it is necessary to use an ampler 
phrase, such as mortal state or condition of mind. 

You often speak of changing your mind, and by so 
doing you only change your opinion of your method of 
thought. This is changeable and changes constantly, 
while the mind or seat of thought lives forever. In 
the use of language we cannot be too careful, as care- 
less speaking creates more ill-feeling and entanglement 
than all besides ; but a difficulty unfortunately, and we 
may add improperly, inheres in words themselves, 
scarcely two lexicographers agreeing perfectly as to 
their exact meaning, and all dictionary-makers giving 
several often diverse interpretations of the same word. 
From this source alone innumerable misunderstandings 
have arisen among professed metaphysicians as well as 
with the outside public; almost all metaphysical treat- 
ises need to be supplemented by a glossary, and as 
glossaries differ, obscurity to the mind of the general 
reader is almost inevitable. 

In this series of lectures we shall endeavor as far as 
possible to simplify and popularize metaphysical termi- 
nology, not so much by the almost futile attempt 
made by some to exclude all unusual and difficult words 
as by an endeavor to trace their derivations and ex- 
plain them, so as to make them familiar and self-evi- 
dently expressive throughout this course of instruction 
at least; whether others will be ready to adopt our 
interpretations or not remains to be seen. Our princi- 
pal object is to make our own utterances plain 
enough to give those hearers and readers who may 
have hitherto been unfamiliar to a lar°;e degree 
with metaphysical phraseology a practical introduc- 
tion to the many words constantly in use, and 



50 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

yet vaguely misunderstood by a large percentage of 
students of metaphysics. Let us say once and finally 
we are no one's followers. We commit ourselves to 
indorse no one's theories, and we do not even pause to 
inquire whether we agree with Mrs. Eddy, Dr. Evans, 
or any other accepted authority on matters meta- 
physical. We are uncompromising advocates of free 
speech and a free press, an<l pity the wretched syco- 
phancy, we might almost say idolatry, of those who 
make worshipful heroes, almost divinities, of certain 
men and women whose conspicuous position before the 
public, while it naturally and justly brings them celeb- 
rity, is no guarantee whatever that they are in any 
special manner divinely illuminated or inspired. The 
first step to be taken by all students of spiritual or 
mental science is to achieve mental or spiritual inde- 
pendence. Thus the oft-repeated cry of metaphysic- 
ians, "Let go of all earthly props and lean only on 
God," is never too loudly shouted. The question, of 
course, naturally arises, how can we lean on God? 
The first commandment of the decalogue, Thou shaft 
have no God beside the Eternal One, is susceptible of 
a variety of interpretations. Consequently, while the 
mass of Christians as well as Jews the world over are 
willing to join in the fervent ejaculation of Israel scat- 
tered all over the earth, "Hear, O Israel! the Lord 
our God is one Lord!" and, while they are willing to 
unite further in the sublime words of the Old and 
New Testaments, "And thou shalt love the Lord with 
all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 
and with all thy strength," the question of the manner 
in which divine revelations reach mankind is always a 
matter of dispute. 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 51 

Conservatism alleges that God miraculously, super- 
naturally, revealed himself to patriarchs and prophets 
who lived several thousand years ago; and Chris- 
tianit} 7 sums up all ancient revelations by affirming 
that in the historical Jesus of nearly two thousand 
years ago divine revelation was finally completed. 
Liberal thought, on the other hand, is never tired of 
affirming that God's revelation is incessant, uninter- 
mittent, that God speaks as well as spoke, writes as 
well as wrote, and reveals as well as revealed his will 
to mankind. The translation of the idea of revelation 
out of the past into the present tense is the great 
triumph of true liberalism over conservatism. This 
liberal view of revelation is the corner-stone of meta- 
physical healing, as the true metaphysician depends 
solely upon divine, omnipresent help in all times of 
trouble, and relies exclusively upon divine strength, 
not as doled out professedly by narrow and- exclusive 
schools of theology and medicine, but as imparted by 
way of celestial influx lighting up the entire nature of 
man and teaching him to consider himself as in daily 
and hourly communion with the Infinite Parent of all 
spirits. This idea does not, as some suppose, and that 
most erroneously, do away with the intervention of 
kindly human beings ; it does not separate us one from 
the other as regards our existence on earth or in any 
other part of the universe, but it teaches us to bow 
before the shrine of truth only, and it makes individual 
conviction of right the standard for each human being. 
It recognizes no infallible or semi-infallible book, 
church, creed, or man ; the essential ego, the at ma 
within, is the final court of appeal: so every man 
becomes his own king and priest, as the chart whereby 



52 LECTURE BY W. J. OOLVILLE. 

he must steer his vessel safely into the port of endless 
felicity is not an ancient parchment scroll, neither is it 
the fleshly tablet of the heart ; it is the spiritual table 
of stone, or rock of ages, the divine nature in man, 
which lies at the very root of man's being and will 
forever constitute him a self-reliant entity and yet a 
continual pensioner on the divine bounty ; as Sweden- 
borg says, "All life is an influx from the Divine 
Mind." In that sense all are dependents and recipi- 
ents, and none of us have anything which we have not 
received, though in another sense we are self-depend- 
ent, as we do not need that any finite being should 
stand between us and the Infinite Fountain of all life. 
Metaphysical healing, which is healing by the power 
of mind over matter, acknowledges the Infinite Mind 
as not only very near to but positively the essential 
life of every finite intelligence, and it is to arouse that 
thought and feeling within the human mind, to enable 
it to lay hold of this great truth, that constitutes the 
true art of healing. 

No one can have read the New Testament narra- 
tives without being forcibly struck with the constant 
allusions therein to a power resident in the patients 
themselves, called faith. This faith must have been 
vastly more than simple belief in a man or a doctrine, 
or it could never have been the instrument whereby 
they were made whole. Faith literally means fidelity ; 
its Latin equivalent is fides, from w r hich the English 
word fidelity springs ; now fidelity or faithfulness 
means honor displayed in conduct, or honorable 
motive. Acting with an honorable motive is neces- 
sary to faithful work. Now, if faith makes whole, 
faitli must be equivalent to spiritual health, wholeness 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 53 

or soundness ; faith has no fraternity with hypocrisy 
or simulation. Faith is honor, integrity, pure and 
simple. It shrinks not from persecution or opposition ; 
though it does not hazardously court oppression, it has 
no fear of man-made law ; it scorns Mrs. Grundy, and 
is ready to take its stand on the simple rock of convic- 
tion, smiling at the angry breakers as they dash in 
blind fury and impotent rage against the solid terra 
firma on which the spirit conscious of rectitude takes 
its stand. This is, in brief, saving faith ; it is loyalty, 
and loyalty must ever be assigned the highest place in 
morals. 

We have no intention whatever in this course of 
lectures of indulging in historical controversy on the 
New Testament ; that is not our aim and object, but as 
this book will doubtless fall into the hands of a large 
number who have been brought up in the Christian 
faith, and who still revere the New Testament as a 
heaven-inspired volume, we will leave it to theologians 
and historians to settle the external points of contro- 
versy always raging and address ourselves to the 
spiritual teaching beneath the cover of the letter. 
Divine laws and methods never change. It is a matter 
of utter indifference to us whether names, dates and 
localities can be depended upon or not. We have a 
record in existence highly prized by millions of civilized 
men and women, which is literally crowded with cases 
of the marvelous restoration to health by unusual 
means, means not endorsed by the conservative medi- 
cal colleges, at least, when every device of medicine 
was useless, and had been abandoned in despair, and 
what lends added emphasis to the New Testament 
story is that it is not altogether unique. Other his- 



54 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

tories perhaps more venerable still are replete with 
similar narratives. Egyptian aud Hindoo priests in 
the long, long ago healed men and women in ways so 
similar to the methods of Jesus and his disciples that 
one may be easily pardoned for thinking that possibly 
the Christian scriptures were in large measure tran- 
scripts of older Bibles. Be this as it may, the greater 
the antiquity and the more numerous the instances of 
such kinds of healing, the more testimony in its favor. 
If spiritual healing were something new, born in this 
century of novelties and sensations, it might be a craze, 
a nine days' wonder, a bubble on the surface of thought, 
here today and gone tomorrow ; but as it has stood the 
test of thousands of years, and constituted the great 
secret of Oriental theosophy long before A. D. 1, there 
can be no chance of its exploding now ; it has lived too 
long and conquered too many obstacles to be silenced 
by persecution or ridicule, but like the hardy forest 
oak of centuries' growth, it grows hardier with every 
storm, and promises ere long to become the supreme, 
masterful giant among the trees, in comparison with 
which all other forest growths will fade into impressive 
insignificance. Idiosyncrasies like parasites will come 
and go; for a time they may so cover the stately 
trunk of the tree round which they wind their poison- 
ous arms thajt they are by superficial observers mis- 
taken for the tree itself ; but one by one they perish 
and are looped away, while the tree whose life they 
threatened, being a tree of life immortal, shows its 
vigor in no way so powerfully as by its repeated vic- 
tories over what may be termed the enemies in its own 
household. 

Metaphysical healing, or more explicitly, healing by 



LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 00 

spiritual power is the only absolute method of healing. 
Spiritual science like mathematics is absolutely exact, 
while all beneath it is valuable just in so far as it is 
related to it and no further. 

We do not, in our teachings, deny that cures are 
performed apparently by outward remedies. We do 
not deny that many reputed cures through the agency 
of faith and prayer are unreal, and are followed quick- 
ly by relapses ; we shall not strive to evade an issue or 
shirk a difficulty arising from such, to many most un- 
welcome facts ; we shall, however, make a sincere and 
earnest effort to help all who study with us to meet 
these difficulties bravely, until at length we hope they 
completely overcome them. All we can do either in 
lectures or classes and all healers can do in their prac- 
tice is to help all whom we and the} T come in contact 
with to rise to such heights of spiritual attainment 
that, like climbers to the summit of some lofty moun- 
tain they find themselves above the tempest, while the 
dwellers in the valleys are drenched with rain and 
alarmed with sonorous peals of thunder and flashes of 
blinding lightning. Those who have made the steep 
and toilsome ascent of a o-reat elevation, standing at its 
top can look up only to clear blue skies and shining 
sunbeams, beneath their feet the clouds and tempests 
hold their carnival. In brief, metaphysical studies are 
intended to help you all to ascend the mountain of 
health, on the summit of which you are free from, be- 
cause above the reach of, drenching rains, furious 
storms and sombre clouds which hide all heavenly 
landscapes. 

To qualify one's self for healing others needs that 
all the work of self-healing through spiritual growth 



56 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

be accomplished first, and before you can yourselves be 
free from disease and suffering you must be free from 
that dwelling-in-the- valley condition of mind which, in 
spite of all the boasted culture of these closing years of 
the nineteenth century, is unhappily the average state 
of the average member of polite society. Let no one 
imagine there is a royal road to health other than the 
king's highway of constant and soulful effort to attain 
what lies before and on high ; none can dispense with 
the initiatory work of spiritual culture, which is not 
always easy at first, but is on the contrary like the lit- 
tle book said in an ancient allegory to have been eaten 
by a prophet, bitter to the taste, difficult to swallow, 
but sweet as honey when once it had passed the ali- 
mentary canal. To correct a vulgar misapprehension 
in the minds of many, it is a duty we owe ourselves as 
well as the public, to say that simple denial of the ex- 
istence of disease will never effect radical cure in diffi- 
cult cases, however much it may charm away the minor 
hysterical difficulties of hyper-sensitive people. The 
utter disregard of all so-called laws of health advocated 
by extremists is to a large extent a fallacy based upon 
sciolistic assumption, and certainly not upon a spiritual 
understanding of the true science of being. " Say it's 
not there, and it's not there," is not a formula which 
will be found to answer in serious cases of derange- 
ment ; magic may be very attractive to the marvel-lov- 
ing and the superstitious, and it is impossible to affix 
limits to the power of human imagination ; but stum- 
bling along in the dark of nescience is not walking in 
the light of science, and if we are to teach a science 
and expound a philosophy we are surely called upon to 
insist that a race must be run and a battle fought by 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 57 

every separate student before a prize is secured or a 
crown is won. To indicate the line of march to be fol- 
lowed by every soldier in the regiment is the work of 
the teacher, and to struggle to discipline every passion, 
appetite and desire so that every inclination which 
wars against the soul may be curbed and reined in, is 
the work of every student. Let us then accept this 
great twofold truth at the outset of our studies. " My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The Father 
cooperates with the child ; the human mind must do 
its part, the human will learn its lesson and throw its 
influence on the side of truth, and then in rightful rela- 
tions between the Creator and the creature we can dis- 
cern the advent of a glorious state in which sickness 
will be unknown, and error and ignorance be dead, 
crushed by the all-victorious heel of the sun-clothed 
woman, or the affections illumined with divine wisdom. 
No more beautiful hymn was ever written than the one 
by Bowring, found in almost every collection, every 
verse of which ends with the glorious sentence, " God 
is wisdom, God is love." Here we have the sphere of 
truth, not a single hemisphere. "We must be wise as 
well as loving, intelligent as well as sympathetic, 
rational as well as emotional, before we can scale the 
pyramid and reach the apex of successful humanitarian 
endeavor. 



LECTUKE III. 



WHAT IS DISEASE, AND HOW DOES SPIRITUAL SCIENCE 
PROPOSE TO OVERCOME IT? 

IN our last lecture we hope we denned with sufficient 
clearness our reasons for adopting the phrase 
" Spiritual Science." It appears to us the most lucid 
and comprehensive title or name we can possibly apply 
to the system we are trying to expound. Remember, 
we lay no claim to invention, discovery, or originality ; 
exposition and explanation constitute our only forte. 
Mrs. Eddy and her followers use the term " Christian 
Science," and call themselves Christian Scientists. 
For several reasons we refuse to accept that label ; 
because of its exclusiveness, and by reason of its dis- 
tastefulness to many minds, we consider it should be 
surpassed by those who do not claim to be Christian in 
the narrower sense of the term, which is after all, an 
ecclesiastical and to some extent a sectarian one. The 
words "Christ," u Christian, and "Christianity" are 
not pleasant to the ears of our Jewish friends, neither 
are they at all acceptable to a large number of Spir- 
itualists, Theists, and Free Eeligionists, all of whom 
can study and practice mental and spiritual science. 
That the power to heal does not belong exclusively to 
a set of persons belonging to an exclusive sect or 
party is self-evident, and no publication of recent times 
has done more to enforce this fact than an article in 

58 



LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 59 

the Century Magazine, June, 1886, in which an em- 
inently Christian man, a Christian apologist and parti- 
san, we may say, points with unexpected candor and 
liberality to the equal benefits flowing from the prac- 
tice of persons of widely different schools of thought 
and phases of religious belief. Roman Catholics and 
Protestants, Faith and Prayer Healers, Spiritualists 
and Buddhists, all point to the miraculous cures effected 
by them in accordance with their own peculiar and 
distinctive methods of operation ; and it cannot be 
denied that Allopathy, Homoeopathy, Hydropathy, 
Magnetism, Electricity and Eclecticism, besides an 
immense number of minor s} r stems, can all point to 
their laurels and bring forward marvelous cases of 
cures performed to substantiate their claim that their 
particular system or mode of treatment is the only 
really efficacious one. Not only miracles, but miracles 
of healing, i.e., wonderful or astonishing, and therefore 
truly marvelous cases, are continually brought before 
us. Statuvolence and vitapathy are numbering up 
their jewels and sending out accounts of the wonders 
performed through some mysterious agent hard to 
define, but evidently potential and curative in its influ- 
ence, while Light and Color cure is so much the rage 
in some quarters that the disciples of the sun's rays 
refracted through the prism and admitted to rooms 
and baths through various colored panes of glass 
triumphantly point to the refulgent orb of day, and 
declare that when any are sick among them they have 
only to call upon old King Sol to restore them to 
health. 

The tendency of the present day is toward eclecticism 
in everything ; but unfortunately the so-called eclectic is 



60* LECTUUE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

as much creed-bound very often as the most rigid allo- 
path. His creed itself is perhaps a more liberal one, but 
he is often a rigid dogmatist nevertheless. True eclec- 
ticism in spirit rather than in name never denies the 
good accomplished by any person or any system ; and 
when a metaphysician is intelligently and inclusively 
eclectic in his theory he never refuses to accept grate- 
fully the blessings conferred by those who do not sail 
under the metaphysical flag or avowedly practice in 
harmony with metaphysical formulas. Disease, as the 
word itself implies, is the want of ease, the opposite of 
ease. Health is harmony, disease is discord ; and while 
an old- school doctor may attribute illness to a mince- 
pie, while a mental healer will argue that functional 
derangements have their rise in disturbances of the 
mind, diverse though their opinions and methods may 
be, both may succeed, or possibly in some instances the 
disciple of Esculapius may succeed where the mental 
healer does not, in removing at least the symptoms of 
the malady. That medicine is not an exact bat only 
an experimental science is everywhere conceded, and 
the simplest common sense is surely enough to con- 
vince a most ordinary thinker that to experiment with 
poisonous drugs and dangerous minerals is a pretty 
risky affair. We advocate a system which employs 
nothing deadly and permits the use of nothing at vari- 
ance with man's highest ideal of correct and harmo- 
nious living. We place spirituality and morality in 
the foreground and teach a theology rather than ma- 
teria medica. By a theology we mean a spiritual sci- 
ence, just as truly a science as geology is a science. 
You notice the termination of the two words is the 
same; the distinguishing Greek noun in the one case is 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 01 

theos, and in the other geos: Theos means God and all 
divine things, geos the earth and all terrestrial things ; 
therefore theology should be as much a science of the 
heavenly world as geology is a science of the earthly 
state. 

Anthropology, or the science of man, can never be 
truly taught unless we consider man as a spiritual be- 
ing ; the gross materialism of medical colleges brutal- 
izes instead of elevates the students. They are taught 
to ignore if not to deride all things spiritual, and in 
their learned ignorance tap their foreheads and declare 
all their intelligence is boxed up in a physical brain in 
the interior of their heads, whereas the simplest rea- 
soning ought to convince them that such cannot be the 
case, as the human brain changes as constantly and as 
radically as all other portions of the body, while the 
four great spiritual powers possessed and manifested 
by humanity, Memory, Understanding, Affection and 
Will, live on long after the molecules forming the brain 
have changed so entirely that probabh T not one of these 
original minute particles of matter remains. " The brain 
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile," is the utter- 
ance of many a college-bred young man, and medical 
colleges are educating women in these days to the same 
height or rather depth of sciolism. Life is a spiritual 
power, man is a spiritual being, the basis of life is spir- 
itual. " Dust thou art, and to dust returnest," was not 
spoken of the soul, but only of the frail changing ten- 
ement called the physical body. These and many 
other aphorisms and truisms stand at the very thresh- 
old of metaphysical discoveries. The basis of our 
philosophy must be spiritual, and when we have found 
the spirit we have found the key to all the mysteries of 



62 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

human existence. "Who can minister to minds dis- 
eased ? is the question ever recurring among invalids. 
Popular novelists put into the mouths of their heroes 
and heroines the plaint, " Oh ! how much longer will 
doctors try to discover in the body the cause and seat 
of these ailments which we know only too well can be 
found only in our sad and discontented minds ? " Dys- 
pepsia, neuralgia, consumption, liver and kidney diffi- 
culties, and a host of other distressing maladies appear 
in the body reflected in a mirror as it were, only after 
they have found a lodgment and taken their origin in 
a discordant mental state. Many metaphysicians say 
there is no body and therefore it cannot suffer. Such 
reasoning may be considered thorough and logical by 
some minds, but to the mass of humanity it does not 
and cannot appeal with the force of truth. We do not 
deny the existence of the body, though we regard it 
only as an effect, certainly not as a cause. Even the 
spiritual body, which is the real imperishable structure 
in which the spirit dwells or which it forms by the ex- 
ercise of its volition as an instrument of expression, is 
only an effect of the essential life principle, without 
which there could be no body, which is but an instru- 
ment, the body holding the same relation to the spirit 
the organ holds to the organ-builder. 

We can conceive of the possibility of there being in 
the world men who could build organs if they tried, 
but have never built any as yet. We can conceive of 
slumbering talent, sleeping causational power, if we may 
use such an expression ; latent genius, dormant energy 
we meet with on every hand, but an organ without a 
mind to bring it into existence is an impossibility. To 
try and think of one is to endeavor to realize the im- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 63 

possible. We can conceive of spirit entirely separate 
from matter, dwelling in a realm of pure mind with no 
organ of expression, and so we can think of spiritual 
beings who have never had any earthly experience, but 
a body without a spirit is as impossible as a house with- 
out a builder. The New Testament informs us of two 
distinct bodies, one natural, the other spiritual. The 
word "natural" in that connection of course means 
physical or material, or, when applied to mental things, 
to that state of condition of mentality which man shares 
in common with the lower animals ; there is then an 
animal body and also a spiritual body. You must take 
notice not only in reading the Bible, but also the works 
of Swedenborg and other spiritual philosophers and 
seers, that the word natural, whether rightfully or 
wrongfully we will not now discuss, has been used only 
in its lower sense, and signifies animal material, or 
physical, therefore it is said the natural (animal) man 
(or part of human nature) does not comprehend the 
things of the Spirit, of God. They are indeed, as Paul 
says, foolishness not only to the physical senses, but 
also to that worldly mind and proud intellect, which, 
though capable of amassing many important facts con- 
cerning physical existence, has no means whatever at 
hand for discerning spiritual truth or demonstrating 
immortality. It is to the spiritual body our attention 
is turned when we utter the oft-repeated truth, " Man 
never dies." The human body never dies, for the spir- 
itual organism does not see corruption. It is not dust, 
from dust it did not spring, and unto dust it can never 
turn. It may improve, and grow more and more beau^ 
teous as ages move, but death and decay can never 
effectually assail it. 



64 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

It is a noteworthy fact that in all ages when angels 
or spiritual messengers, ministering spirits, have ap- 
peared to men they have shown themselves as perfectly 
human in their form, and always in the enjoyment of 
perennial youth. The angels never grow old ; they are 
young always, and these angels, ministering spirits or 
messengers, are your own brethren, members of the 
race to which you belong, human beings more fully de- 
veloped than yourselves ; as men are more fully devel- 
oped than boys, and women than girls, so angels are 
more fully developed than men and women, and that is 
all the real difference there is between the angels and 
you, who are a little lower than they. The spiritual 
body cannot wear out or decay, and there is no reason 
why the physical body should ; and here we are stating 
a novel and startling proposition, not new to students 
of the occult, not new to those who have peered deeply 
into Rosicrucian and other mysteries, but diametrically 
opposed to the prevailing belief of Christendom and all 
the rest of the w r orld. We ask you to lay aside all your 
prejudices and preconceptions, and lend us not only 
your ears but your most earnest attention while we 
reason with you on this matter, for remember we are 
no dogmatists. We ask no one to agree with us, but 
we fully agree with the author of Proverbs in this at 
least, that it is a shame and folly to answer a matter 
before we have heard it ; we must all be ready to wel- 
come revolutionary truths, and not let the popular idols 
of misbelief and ignorant superstition bar for us the 
Golden Gates which open into the temple of heavenly 
wisdom. 

The body is frequently compared to a machine, and 
a machine wears out : therefore say those who compare 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 65 

things which differ, and a machine differs widely from 
a human body, " the human body must wear out too." 

" Constant use wears out my piano," says a 
musician, " and constant use wears out my body too, 
for my spirit's fleshly tabernacle is an instrument which 
wears out by constant use just as truly as a musical 
instrument grows old and useless by continued service." 
]STow let us see whether there is really any true analogy 
or not between the piano and the human body. In 
the first place, the body is animate and the piano inan- 
imate ; that is a wide difference to start with. In the 
second place, the wood, wire, ivory, and all the other 
materials which go to make up a piano are just so 
much inert matter put together by mechanical skill, 
but endowed with no recognizable power of recupera- 
tion or increase. Can a piano lose several pounds of 
its weight and then recover them? If a piece is 
knocked off from the piano it is gone, it never replaces 
itself; if the bulk of the instrument is lessened it never 
recuperates ; but man does. Man's body is not made 
in any sense after the fashion of a neuter machine. 
The physical body of man is an ever fluctuating con- 
course of molecules ; the particles composing the human 
body change every moment. Thus the structure is 
being incessantly renewed, and this perpetual renewal 
of the fabric is an antidote to all destruction and decay. 

The elixir of life so long sought for by the mystics 
could never be discovered in any powerful medicine or 
potent spell administered by sense, and those who 
become to any degree versed in the esoteric doctrine of 
magic know that the utmost claim made by the wise 
and learned initiates of secret spiritual orders was that 
by a life of rigid and long-continued self-discipline 



66 LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. 

they could arrive at so high a point in spiritual devel- 
opment as to be able to look from thence with sublime 
indifference on all material things. They claimed, as 
Jesus claimed, that the highest condition of man was 
when he had reached a stage m his unfoldment where 
he could say with truth, " I have power to lay down 
my life and take it again, power to destroy the body, 
the living temple, and build it again." This power is 
not the exclusive right or possession of one here and 
there, but is common to universal humanity, and the 
secret of the unlimited prolongation of life in the 
body is the simple but all-comprehensive secret 
of so disciplining the lower to the higher nature, 
that the spirit can command the body instead of the 
lower passions controlling the spiritual aspirations and 
desires. 

We' do not say that physical immortality is ever 
desirable, but we do say that the happiest, purest, 
easiest, and most natural way for the spirit to quit the 
body is for it to withdraw from its sensuous envelope 
in response to a more powerful drawing toward the 
spiritual realm of being. 

There is a vast difference between the thought of 
always dwelling in a material form and the thought of 
being able to do so if one desired. We do not believe 
the most perfect race of beings the planet will ever 
sustain upon its surface will become physically immor- 
tal, but we do believe the reason why they will not 
always remain on earth is because they will not wish 
to. Is there not a vast difference between voluntarily 
leaving a tenement and being rudely evicted from it? 
Is it not far sweeter and more reasonable to contem- 
plate death as the voluntary severance by the spirit of 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 67 

the chord which binds it to the flesh than to think of 
death as an accident or a something dreadful and 
inevitable to which we must all reluctantly submit? 
In death robbed of its terror, regarded as a welcome 
change, a happy release, there is nothing to be feared ; 
but in death as the result of accident, the effect of dis- 
sipation, or the last stage in a long, painful illness, 
there is indeed much to be feared and avoided if pos- 
sible, and judging by all accounts received from com- 
municating spirits who have passed through death 
summarily or prematurely, their condition beyond the 
grave is anything but an enviable one. They seem 
in many instances to be like poor victims of a sad 
catastrophe, driven from their homes, their dwellings 
swept away by fire and flood, while they, homeless, 
helpless, hungry and naked, wander as wretched men- 
dicants around the haunts which once they called 
after their own names. Disease is most certainly 
unnatural, and so is unwelcome transition to the spirit 
world ; the dear good old man or woman who de- 
parts in peace, having fulfilled every duty on earth, 
passes away, not reluctantly, but joyously ; in such 
cases the spirit makes no effort to retain the bod\^, but 
rather gladly lets it go. In many instances those who 
attained power to preserve their earthly forms as long 
as they wished, according to mystic writers, preferred 
to pass from the realm of mortal sense to lingering any 
longer here, and as Hargrave Jennings, an eminent 
writer on the Rosicrucian Mysteries declares, that those 
very men who had power to make gold by magical 
means no longer cared for it, as no mind bound b}^ the 
love or mortal things is sufficiently emancipated from 
worldly desires to have attained to that sublime spir- 



08 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

itual altitude which must be reached before one can 
exercise the true magician's wand. 

Disease should not be nor will it be the reason for 
man's passing to spirit life in the new generation. Dis- 
ease is a something so repulsive, so hateful, that for- 
tunes are spent every year in the endeavor to over- 
come it. The numberless doctors in every city, almost 
in every village — there are swarms of medical men, 
and most of them have a fair, some a very large prac- 
tice — amply testify to the natural hatred of sickness 
which in every part of the world naturally fills the 
human breast. The greatest men of the East, the most 
celebrated in all history, are those who have destroyed 
and conquered disease and established health in its 
stead ; but though there are a great many excellent 
men, ornaments to society, in the medical profession, it 
cannot be denied that diseases multiply, and the death 
rate increases in the very heart of the pretentious and 
highly cultured civilization of the present day. Why 
is it, we enquire, that while doctors multiply, so do dis- 
eases ? Why is it that almost eveiy new medical work 
contains a description of some new disease and how to 
treat it? Theological quackery has always taken for 
granted that children came into the world already 
ruined and lost. Schemes of salvation have been in- 
vented to save men from the inherited curse, and chil- 
dren's minds have been blighted in the bud by the in- 
culcation of doctrines, upon which every conceivable 
abase has fattened. Medical quackery has taken it for 
granted that children come into the world physically 
damned ; but the medical man, unlike the priest, does 
not offer a full and free salvation from all the physical 
effects of Adam's fall, while the church does hold out 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 69 

hopes of unending felicity and more than a return to 
the bliss of Eden for those who take her spiritual nos- 
trums in the forms of belief and sacraments. 

Children should never be taught to look upon dis- 
ease as anything but unnatural and foreign to their 
original constitution. Health, not disease, should be 
held up before them as in accordance with nature's 
laws. Disease, the want of ease and its opposite, is no 
more natural and necessary than discords are in music. 
The science of melody, not of an unmelodious noise, is 
taught in our academies and conservatories. Truly, 
disease is a state of imperfection, but it is more and 
worse than imperfection. It is a state of inversion of 
good, a perverted condition, disorderly and utterly 
foreign to the law of growth ; it is a mistake, an error, 
a something never to be expected, petted, fondled or 
condoned with. Diseases and vices are all alike tares 
which truth must bind in bundles for the burning in 
the unquenchable tire of purity and divine understand- 
ing. We must make no concessions to disease, no com- 
promises with it. It must be attacked root as well as 
branch, eradicated from the system by its prior eradi- 
cation from the mind, and it is this work of eradicating 
disease which spiritual methods are alone capable of 
accomplishing. Causes, not symptoms, must be at- 
tacked, for if we fail to find the source of error, no 
matter how often we may lop off its branches, its root 
remaining, it will continue to put forth new wood, new 
leaves, new flowers, new fruit. A razor can never do 
the work of a depilatory, scissors can never take the 
place of tweezers. External methods of treatment 
temporarily destroy appearances ; they remove outward 
indications, but instead of destroying the root of the 



70 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

malady they essay to cure, they throw fresh strength 
and vigor to its already robust root. 

We cannot for a moment doubt the evident sin- 
cerity and deep conscientious feeling of many who 
parade the vices of society before the world, and espe- 
cially before the young, but while giving them credit 
for the goodness of their motives we are compelled to 
differ from them entirely in their method of operation 
Private lectures to young men only or to young women 
only are not necessarily evil, and when of a strictly 
anatomical and physiological character may fairly be 
said to constitute a legitimate fraction of collegiate 
education ; but our deep- seated conviction is that co- 
education, or the equal training of both sexes in mixed 
schools and universities will soon completely supersede 
the one-sided training still so much in vogue. It seems to 
us for this and other yet more important reasons a mis- 
chievous concession to old fogyism for modern reform- 
ers to speak to one sex in the absence of the other on 
any matter in which both sexes are equally interested ; 
and as nothing can possibly affect man without also 
affecting woman, and vice versa, so that system of 
training which seeks publicly and privately to educate 
men and women, girls and boys together, in all that 
pertains to their genuine welfare is the nearest ap- 
proach to the ideal in education. 

But the most important question before the world 
is what to teach and how to teach it. The recent 
celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
niversary of the founding of Harvard University, 
one of the most celebrated and influential col- 
leges in the world, has opened afresh the ques- 
tion of the true basis and best methods of human 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 71 

culture, everywhere. Newspapers are crowded with 
glowing accounts of anniversary exercises, reports of 
brilliant speeches by eminent educators, and learned 
essays by worthy men and women on educational 
topics fill the pages of the leading magazines, while the 
pulpit takes as a text, "Add to your faith knowledge," 
and straightway discourses upon education. Educa- 
tion is unfoldment, not cramming ; it is a healthy, nat- 
ural exercise which ought to be positively delightful 
to all who engage in it. Instead of being regarded as 
an irksome task or unpleasant duty it should be unal- 
loyed pleasure, and it is wherever the true meaning of 
the word is upheld in the methods employed. The 
trouble is that a great part of many people's time is 
spent in learning what they have to unlearn after- 
wards. Children and adults are all taught many 
things it can do them no good to know. The less one 
knows of vice the better, for knowledge of evil benefits 
no one. It is only the knowledge of good we require ; 
there is infinite meaning, which does not, however, lie 
upon the surface in the old allegory in Genesis, of the 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The knowl- 
edge of good is enough, to learn evil is both a mischiev- 
ous and superfluous study. Time is fleeting, and the 
conservation of both time and energy is the object in 
view in all sound ethical and economical instruction. 
Many persons talk ridiculously of young people seeing 
the world and sowing their wild oats. A popular de- 
lusion seems to have inebriated the minds of many to 
the effect that contact with sin is positively beneficial; 
thus young persons ought to see death (miserable life) 
in all its hideous foulness, not always indeed in the 
naked ugliness which is so repellant to all sensitive 



72 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

persons, but masked in brilliant salons, in aristocratic 
brothels and polite gambling bells; the cesspools of 
iniquity in which many young men are not only per- 
mitted, but encouraged by their elders to roam, are the 
plague-spots of society, the festering sores on the social 
body which should never be recognized except by those 
who recognize them only to remove them. 

When we were lecturing in San Diego, in Southern 
California, we were questioned as to the good or harm 
being done by a certain Ben Ilogan, who was drawing 
crowds nightly to a Methodist church and regaling his 
audience upon the sweetmeats and spices which he had 
carefully culled from the gaming table, the habits of 
confidence men and other disreputable individuals — 
the newspapers publishing column after column of in- 
structions in the art of cheating. All this, remember, 
from the lips of a "converted" man posing in the 
role of evangelist, or revival preacher. Again we say 
we do not impute unworthy motives to the man in 
question or others who follow courses similar to his. 
We do, however, most vehemently denounce the modus 
operandi of any such revival work, for if it revives any- 
thing it can revive nothing but prurient curiosity and a 
distorted inventive genius which will in many instances 
set to work and endeavor to improve upon the models 
presented from the sensational pulpit. It is useless to 
say the lecture is delivered in the interests of morality, 
and the lecturer never finishes without sermonizing 
upon the wickedness and terrible consequences of such 
dastardly acts. The bulk of the young people in his 
audience who have been attracted merely for amuse- 
ment are in too many instances like children who eat 
the middle out of a tart and leave the crust ; to such 



LECTUUE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 73 

the glowing- accounts of vice are the jam or mincemeat, 
while the moral teachings between which the sensational 
body of the discourse is sandwiched is the forsaken and 
unpalatable crust and as the crust of a strictly orthodox 
pie is often nearly as unwholesome as the center, it may 
not be altogether a mistake to refuse it, for revivalists 
instead of dilating upon the natural and inevitable 
consequences of misdeeds, picture on the one hand a 
hell utterly at variance with all ennobling sentiment 
for the finally impenitent, and instant salvation, and, 
in the event of the body's dissolution, glorification, for 
all who believe then and there that Jesus is their 
Saviour and the atonement made on Calvary the pro- 
pitiation for all their sins, past, present and to come. 

We cannot be too urgent in our protest against 
bringing young people especially, face to face with 
evil; necessarily such befouling contact with pitch only 
blackens the one who handles it, and never does it give 
the slightest resisting power to those besmeared. The 
work of true science is to enlighten youth in true 
knowledge and virtue. There is no science of evil; 
evil is unscientific, irrational ; it is opposed to all truth 
and right and it can never assist any one to the right 
knowledge of anything to be shown a picture of some- 
thing maimed, hideous, distorted ; such a mental image 
should never be allowed to pass before the mirror of 
the youthful mind. Plenty of evil will be brought 
before young people in their contact with societ} r as at 
present organized in any case without teachers of 
morals stirring up foulness and causing their listeners 
to inhale the stench of error. 

Just as it is with moral obliquity so is it with 
physical disease ; to study disease or pathology, the 



74 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

so-called science of disease (literally a treatise upon 
disease, or a word about it), is to make a lament- 
able mistake, as it introduces a highly objectionable, 
an exceedingly pernicious element into a curriculum. 
We do not want to know anything about disease 
except in this sense : to know what health is, and 
therefore to understand that whatever is opposed to 
it must be disease. Take, for example, a teacher of 
art : he needs to show the students whom he is instruct- 
ing how to draw or paint correctly, he must show them 
how the lines and colors should look, how they should 
blend ; his incessant and untiring endeavor is to place 
the true model, the correct ideal, before them ; in their 
ignorance and inexperience, and too often through 
carelessness, they will do a good deal of bad work, 
they will disfigure paper and canvas by crooked lines 
and discordant combinations of color; but it is not for 
the teacher to imitate their errors and discords, wasting 
time, energy and material in multiplying incorrectness. 
He must be in all things faithful to his highest ideal of 
right and perfection. If the lesson is only how to 
draw a line, the teacher must draw the line correctly 
and never any other way than correctly.. The student 
must become familiar with the perfect line, see it be- 
fore his mind's eye, and by constantly gazing at it and 
dwelling upon it he will at length be able to duplicate 
it. Now, nothing is so necessary in a college of health 
as to get the minds of students and invalids onto 
health and away from disease. Everything in the 
house should be harmonious, colors should blend, 
forms should be true to nature, sounds should be 
melodious, everything grating and jarring should be 
rigorously excluded, and, above all, patients should 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. 75 

never be encouraged to talk about their ailments. 
Disease is not a proper subject for conversation. It 
is well enough to mention it confidentially to an 
experienced friend, or one to whom you apply for 
relief, but to make it a topic of discussion on ordinary 
occasions is both poisonous and disgusting, as many 
persons are so pitiably sensitive to the feelings of 
others, and many have such vivid imaginations, that 
they are at once made unwell themselves by hearing of 
the sicknesses of others. A hospital for this reason is 
often a nursery for disease ; dormitories filled with 
ailing and complaining patients, moaning and sighing, 
turning restlessly from side to side on their uneasy 
couches, prevent recovery among sensitive people, 
despite all the care and kindness of doctors, nurses and 
attendants. The same is true of lunatic asylums, pris- 
ons and penitentiaries. In all such institutions, no 
matter how good the management and efficient the 
officials, the inmates corrupt each other as one breathes 
disease and insanity from the atmosphere impregnated 
with noxious emanations. A vitiated room from which 
air and sunlight are excluded is a chamber of death, but 
when poisonous gases breathed from the patients add 
to the unwholsomeness of the in any case " sick cham- 
ber," the combination of horrors is fearful to contem- 
plate. 

Thanks to the progressive spirit of the present, san- 
itation is being made a study ; ventilation is receiving 
attention, sunshine is being welcomed, and forms of 
treatment are surely if slowly becoming less barbaric, 
but the institutional fever shows little signs of abate- 
ment even yet ; to mass sufferers, lunatics and criminals 
together is still the prevailing custom and idea, and 



76 LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

until such ideas and practices are fully eliminated 
from society disease will increase, crime will multiply, 
and organic efforts to check it will prove ineffectual. 
In short, metaphysical methods, though in perfect har- 
mony with sanitaiy and dietetic, measures, though in 
full sympathy with every effort to put virtue and 
cleanliness to the front in place of vice and dirt, are 
at deadly variance with all those antiquated hospital 
and asylum theories which still hold sway in popular 
belief. Overcome evil with good, is the adage of all 
true metaphysicians. This good is health versus dis- 
ease, sanity versus insanity, virtue versus vice. To 
isolate the sick and then surround them with the 
healthy, to isolate the insane and give them thoroughly 
sane companions, to isolate the vicious and put them 
in the society of the positively virtuous, is the key to 
complete reformation in medicine and reform. When- 
ever possible, patients should be treated in their own 
homes, and every true healer must teach his patient the 
science of health, thereby making him strong to resist 
disease in future. 



LECTUKE IV. 



PRAYER AS A HEALING AGENT. 

FEOM the earliest times, prayer has been assigned 
a prominent place in therapeutics, not indeed bj 
the hard-headed scholars and materialistic philosophers 
who pride themselves on what is now popularly re- 
garded as scientific agnosticism, but by the great mass 
of mankind, and we can never overlook the fact that 
the majority of men and women are not and never 
have been great thinkers. Emotion sways a far larger 
multitude than can be influenced by cold logic. Thus 
the logician may have a select, but usually only a 
small assembly to address, while the emotional en- 
thusiast, no matter how illogical or even irrational 
his conclusions, usually finds himself when on the 
platform face to face with a numerous auditory. 
It is just so with literature. The books most widely 
read are never those which appeal to the profoundest 
depth of human intellect. They are sensational and ro- 
mantic treatises dealing with the affections rather than 
the reason. Love stories flood the book-market, and 
they always find a sale, while purely scientific works 
have only a very limited circulation. It cannot be 
denied that mankind in general is far more emotional 
than rational. They are far more religiously than 
scientifically disposed ; for if today scientists may be 

77 



78 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

counted by millions, religionists number hundreds of 
millions. . 

Keligious belief is natural to the race. It cannot 
be eradicated; all endeavors to eliminate it must en- 
tirely prove futile, ■ for it is an essential product of 
human nature; but like all other tendencies, it does 
mischief when allowed to run wild ; it needs training, 
disciplining and hedging round with reasonable walls 
or fences of intellectual restraint. The emotions, senti- 
ments, feelings, all need to be assigned to their proper 
places ; their functions need to be studied, and their 
culture and exercise made a matter of the most careful 
consideration. Emotion is essential to love, for love is 
itself an emotion, or at any rate it is the source of 
emotion. Hate and dislike are only inversions or per- 
versions of its expression. Religion is truly founded in 
love ; thus the two greatest commandments of religion 
are, Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor. All religious sentiments, duties and obligations 
take their rise and find their fulfillment in love. God 
is love ; love is the supreme good ; Avithout it there can 
be no virtue worthy the name either in theory or prac- 
tice. Even the old Roman idea of virtue, as synony- 
mous with valor, courage, bravery, had its source in 
love. Men love their country, their homes, their fami- 
lies, their co-patriots ; therefore they are ready to fight 
for them. They even shed the last drop of their heart's 
blood for winat they love the best. Whatever is be- 
loved has its valiant defenders and, if need be, its mar- 
tyrs, but whatever calls forth no affection inspires no 
heroism, no ardor, no devotion. We all know how 
potent is the spell of affection ; it is stronger than all 
beside ; it is the absolutely unconquerable element in 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 79 

man's constitution which links him to deity- and im- 
mortality. Love inspires prayer, and true prayer is 
nothing more nor less than love in exercise. Prayer 
must be regarded as affection struggling to accomplish 
wonders on behalf of a beloved object. As love laughs 
at bolts and bars and undertakes to effect an escape 
from prison which reason could never pronounce feas- 
ible, so love lays hold upon infinite benevolence, allies 
itself with faith, forms allegiances with hope, and con- 
trols both faith and hope, using them as servants to do 
its bidding. Love is mightier than either faith or hope, 
mightier than both combined, but employs these sister 
graces in the accomplishment of its end. It takes 
them indeed into partnership with itself; but they are 
juniors, it is ever the senior and the director of the 
firm. 

Prayer is spoken of as foolish by many who do not 
understand it and cannot comprehend its relation to 
eternal and unchanging law. From their standpoint 
it is folly to pray ; prayer to them is idle breath, and 
were they to attempt to pray in their present frame of 
mind, unless the attempt to put prayer to a fair test 
changed their position and personality, they would 
utterly fail to gain answer to their petitions because 
in reality though seeming to pray they would not 
and could not pray at all. Prayer is the outgoing 
of spiritual energy ; prayer is no rival of work, no sub- 
stitute for earnest and practical effort. It is work, 
only it is not work of any ostensible kind. It is not 
physical employment, but it is the putting forward of 
the most earnest effort of the spirit. It is sometimes 
hard, even painful, agonizing work. It uses every nerve 
of the spirit, it strains every fibre of the mental being; 



80 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

thus many persons are exhausted through the fervor of 
their supplications ; the} 7 are positively worn out men- 
tally and physically, through the hard work some 
earnest prayer has been to them. True prayer, how- 
ever, does not of necessity involve difficult and trying 
labor. On the other hand, quite the opposite ; for when 
rightly understood and intelligently made use of, the 
agency of prayer is the exercise of the sweetest, calm- 
est and most tranquilizing of all the powers and activi- 
ties of our being. Let us consider prayer under several 
distinct heads. 

First, does prayer, or does it not, presuppose fickle- 
ness on the part of Deity, or mutability in the law gov- 
erning the universe? We answer unequivocally, with- 
out an instant's hesitancy, true prayer acknowledges 
first and last the unchangeableness of Deity and uni- 
versal law. How then does prayer accomplish any- 
thing if God and law are immutable ? Precisely in 
the way that all work is rewarded and industry 
crowned. We must understand what the universal, 
immutable law is before we undertake to say what can 
and what cannot transpire beneath its sovereignty. 
On the question of universality and immutability of 
law in the universe most thinkers are agreed, but on 
the question, what is the source and character of this 
all-pervading and all-prevailing law T ? philosophers dif- 
fer widely. Theism postulates law as the manifesta- 
tion of intelligence ; it conceives of Infinite Mind as 
the original inspiration of law, but atheism considers 
law to be supreme over intelligence and the cause of it. 
To use a favorite expression, and adopt a favorite 
method of those calling themselves agnostics or materi- 
alists, reasoning from the known to the unknown, 



LECTURE BY AV. J. COLVILLE. 81 

from the seen to the unseen, from the physical to the 
spiritual, from effect to cause, let us see where we will 
be landed. Will it be in the arms of cold, unfeeling 
force, or in those of warm, conscious and loving intelli- 
gence ? There can be in the earthly state no law with- 
out pre-directing mind. Laws are not the creators of 
will; the laws of a country or a state do not pre-exist 
and then slowly evolve will in the persons whom they 
govern; but will is in every case the source of the 
being, and the only means of the enforcement of law. 
If we then have to do in universal nature with an 
Infinite Intelligence, an all-directing mind, and if we 
ourselves are recipients of the Divine nature, may 
there not be infinite truth in the Scripture passage, 
"God worketh in us both to will and to do of His good 
pleasure ? " God works in us, God prays to us. We 
hear the supplicatory voice of the spirit of the Eternal 
in our own souls whenever conscience speaks, for con- 
science is not as some vainly imagine — a mere product 
of earthlv training to be altered and modified bv 
changing beliefs and circumstances. Conscience is col- 
lective knowledge, universal knowledge, concrete infor- 
mation, truth heard and known to some extent by -all 
humanity. 

Dr. Solomon Schindler, in a very excellent discourse 
delivered in the Columbus Avenue Jewish temple, point- 
ed out to his audience one of the most striking illustra- 
tions of the fact of the Divine indwelling, when he 
showed how human ideas of wrong always remained, but 
they grew keener and more vivid as a brighter light of 
truth and knowledge illumined man's understanding. 
We think more things wrong today than we formerly 
did, because we have keener perceptions of right as a 



82 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. * 

people than the Israelites had in the da}^s of David and 
Solomon. But we never call that good which our 
ancestors regarded as evil, while we do consider many 
things evil they in their ignorance at least tolerated as 
allowable. Every one of the ten commandments con- 
stituting the Decalogue still remains at the foundation 
of all enlightened jurisprudence the world over. To 
acknowledge one only God, to refrain from evil speech, 
to observe one clay out of every seven for rest, to do no 
murder, to commit no adultery, to deal honestly and 
bear only true witness, and to covet naught, all these 
are commands engraven on the heart of society. Truth 
when once apprehended is never lost sight of by the 
world. Truth never becomes falsehood, wrong never 
becomes right. We do not all hear the voice of truth 
with equal distinctness ; we do not all enjoy an equally 
abundant moral revelation, but so far as it expresses 
itself at all, the moral sense is the same in every 
human being the wide world over. We must never 
let go of the proposition, there is an absolute right and 
au eternal distinction between right and wrong in the 
very nature of things. Sophistry alone endeavors to 
rob us of our moral heritage and becloud the clear vis- 
ion of the immortal soul. 

It is natural to man to ally himself with celestial 
power, to seek divine help and heavenly aid in every time 
of doubt, difficulty and trouble. The very act of prayer 
is a conscious and effective effort put forth by man in 
reasonable hope of achieving by means of it a definite 
and desired result. Half-way fatalism, with its mani- 
fold errors and inconsistencies, is always ready to step 
in and declare prayer to be foolish and valueless, 
because prayer as a spiritual power cannot be measured 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 83 

and detected by earthly standards. The thorough- 
going fatalist, if there is such a person living, must 
deny the possibility of changing any conceivable con- 
dition in any part of the universe by any conceivable 
kind of effort on the part of man. Therefore, all 
action is either inevitable or useless. We must either 
consider ourselves entirely incompetent to accomplish 
anything by any sort of endeavor, or we must allow 
that all our endeavors are foreordained and part of an 
infinite plan we have no hand in altering. If fatalistic 
argument is sound, even fatalism itself does not neces- 
sarily offer any objection to the efficacy of prayer ; it 
merely compels us to consider ourselves in the light of 
machines, and our prayers as a part of the inevitable 
working of the clock-work arrangement of our being. 
Prayers are answered at all events ; to say the least, 
they appear to be. answered. They are not in vain, for 
many and many a sufferer who has vainly sought relief 
in all other directions has found relief in prayer. Let 
scoffers say it is fancied or imaginary relief, let them 
in their supercilious contempt for all things spiritual 
declare prayer to be consummate folly, an exercise 
unworthy of rational beings ; their vulgar jibes and 
sneers can never alter facts, which indeed are stubborn 
things. The efficacy of prayer is a demonstrated fact 
in this world in the nineteenth century, and if imagi- 
nation and fancy can be induced by prayer, and these 
are such powerful therapeutic agents that can relieve 
suffering and cure distressed maladies, if they can turn 
despair into hope, misery into joy, complaint into 
thanksgiving, then let us thank God for having so 
constituted us that we are amenable to the blessed 
curative influences of fancy and imagination. 



84 LECTUEE BY W. J. CoLVILLE. 

But what are fancy and imagination \ can skepti- 
cism decide ? Are they not mysteries, well nigh 
insoluble factors in human economy ? The word " im- 
agination " leads us to suppose that, when we imagine 
anything, something is imagined upon our brain or 
some state of our consciousness ; to imagine is to reflect 
an image ; something impresses the brain and imprints 
thereon a likeness of itself which we see with the mind's 
eye, independent of the physical organs of vision. 
Imagination should not be repudiated or laughed to 
scorn as it too often is, but carefully and scientifically 
recognized and cultivated ; imagination and fancy need 
careful training and discipline it is true, not repression, 
they are spiritual and mental powers of great impor- 
tance and interest to us all and can be so utilized as to 
render unspeakable benefit to their possessors and cul- 
tivators. 

A great many answers to prayer,, so-called, are sim- 
ply results of stimulated fancy or quickened imagina- 
tion ; but the peculiar state of activity into which 
these powers have been brought by the effort of prayer 
has proved itself therapeutically indispensable under 
the existing circumstances. When some years ago 
Prof. Tyndall proposed his " prayer test," which ex- 
cited so much controversy and feeling both in scientific 
and religious circles, he entirely failed to comprehend 
the true nature of prayer and showed himself totally 
destitute of knowledge on spiritual subjects. If prayer 
were an outward, formal, mechanical act consisting in 
the repetition of certain formulated phrases, it would 
be easy enough to employ prayer in one hospital, but 
nc ', in another ; but as true prayer is entirely distinct 
f> fa ritual observance and is an emotion of the spirit, 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 85 

an inspiration of the mind, not the parrot-like repetition 
of stereotyped words, Prof. Tyndall could have no pos- 
sible means of knowing where prayer was offered and 
where it was not ; he could only tell where an outward 
form of words was employed, and the employment of a 
set form of words or the introduction of the element of 
outward speech into prayer is not regarded as essential 
by any true believer in the efficacy of prayer. 

In the New Testament prayer is permitted orally 
and possibly recommended in the adoption of the 
paternoster as a model form of prayer ; but Jesus laid 
by far the greater stress on silent, secret prayer, the 
prayer of the retired chamber, the prayer of the 
earnest soul, pouring out its petitions at the throne of 
heaven, when no earthly e} T e or ear could see or hear. 
In a hospital oral prayer might be peremptorily for- 
bidden, an intolerant board of directors might refuse 
to sanction any kind of religious service on the prem- 
ises, but no managers could force the souls of the 
inmates to be silent ; watchers might be stationed at 
every bedside, to prevent the slightest semblance to a 
prayer escaping from the lips of any person in the 
building, but all the while that prayer was forcibly 
interdicted the most earnestly heartfelt, the effectual, 
fervent prayer of the righteous, which availeth much, 
might be ascending like fragrant incense to spiritual 
realms and obtaining from thence responses so marvel- 
ous that the materialists who had forbidden prayer 
could only attribute signal cases of unexpected recov- 
ery in their wards to the inexplicable action of unde- 
fined laws and forces of nature. 

Prayer is not confined to locality. It matters not 
how far away the one may be who prays for a sufferer. 



86 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

A prayer offered in India is as effective for an invalid 
in London as though offered in the British metropolis 
at the patient's bedside. It is, therefore, impossible to 
interdict prayer, which is a lifting up of the spiritual 
nature in confident expectancy of winning a suit in a 
heavenly court. Prayer, moreover, does not depend 
for its efficacy upon the correctness of the suppliant's 
creed; prayers are offered to the Eternal under the 
greatest variety of names. Jehovah, Brahma, Allah, 
Jesus, are all names frequently used in prayer to desig- 
nate the Supreme Being. From the point of view of 
controversial theology they cannot possibly be all cor- 
rect, as they do not all represent the same idea of 
Deity. Jehovah is a distinctly Jewish conception of 
the Infinite Being. Indeed, there are two distinct and 
widely divergent ideas embodied in this mysterious 
name. Jehovah, or Yahveh, represents the Eternal 
Being, infinite in power and majesty to the most 
advanced and illumined seers and sages of the house 
of Israel; but to the ordinary undeveloped Hebrew 
mind Jehovah is a local and titular being, the unseen 
head or president of the Jewish clan, a tribal divinity, 
who takes up arms for Israel against all its oppressors. 
Etymologically speaking, the name legitimately repre- 
sents the Infinite, as it signifies the always-enduring, 
the ever-living; but no matter what the word itself 
may mean to scholars, when used in prayer its value 
depends solely upon the idea associated with it in the 
mind of the worshiper. Thus we can readily see how 
very wide apart in thought and feeling many Jews may 
be while they all address Jehovah in their prayers. 
One addresses the Infinite Being, boundless, ineffable. 
He endeavors to affix no limits to the being and love 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 87 

of God. He views the Supreme Intelligence as an 
infinite fountain of matchless justice, love, truth and 
wisdom, utterly incapable of an emotion of fanaticism 
or partiality toward any race or individual, while 
another, using the same outward form of prayer, pic- 
tures before his mental vision a capricious Deity, who 
fights for one race under all circumstances against all 
others for the sole reason that he has elected Jacob's 
descendants to share in his covenant of mercy. The 
prayers arising from the minds of two such widely 
different classes of religionists (though sheltered under 
the cover of a common family name, the poles asunder 
in belief and sentiment) would necessarily induce 
totally different results in the suppliants who offered 
them, and draw responses from widely separated 
planes of spiritual existence. 

Take now the name of Jesus as a very common 
example of similar diversity of thought and object; 
no two minds conceive of Jesus in exactly the same 
way, while different bodies of professing Christians 
have persecuted each other even to death on account 
of diversity of view regarding Jesus. Calvin and Ser- 
vetus w T ere both Christians; both called on Jesus to 
deliver them in their hour of need, but one called 
Jesus " God the Son," the other called him the " Son 
of God," and for this difference in expression one be- 
lieved the other to be in danger of everlasting condem- 
nation. There can be little question of the sincerity of 
either the apostle of Geneva or the celebrated Socinian 
whose death he instigated. Such a terrible result of 
verbal and creedal bigotry is only valuable as a most 
powerful incentive against attaching too much impor- 
tance to creeds, dogmas and expressions, while the real 



88 LECTUJJE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

worth of religion, its spiritual element, is ignored and 
well nigh forgotten. We cannot, however, if we study 
spiritual laws and principles fail to see to what an im- 
mense extent our motive or intention in prayer deter- 
mines the result. The Eoman Catholic Church has 
always laid great stress on direction of intention. The 
same prayers, almost invariably the Paternoster and 
Ave Maria, are repeated, whether the object be one of 
universal or private and personal import. Masses are 
said in the same words for widely different intentions, 
and it is always claimed that masses and prayers bring 
about the special ends for which they were offered. 
The spiritual truth veiled in this practice does not lie 
near the surface : we have to dig deep into the wells of 
mind to find an adequate reason for this belief. If 
prayers were answered according to the letter of a 
petition, then it would matter very little what the state 
of mind might be so long as the correct words were 
uttered. 

Such a foolish belief appears to hold sway not only 
among those pagans who use praying machines, which 
grind out prayers as a hand-organ grinds out music, 
but among many whose so-called Christian education 
ought to have instilled far more enlightened ideas into 
their minds. What is really no prayer at all is often 
confounded with prayer, and prayer is therefore 
brought into disrepute, insulted and ridiculed, because 
the common sense of the country cannot see the utility 
of a pretender masquerading as a genuine spiritual 
power. In many houses of worship prayer is brought 
into disrepute more than in any infidel lecture hall or 
atheistic publication ; the stale jokes and supercilious 
jibes of the worst kind of atheistic attack on spiritual 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 89 

truth are furnished by the ridiculous mummeries of 
professedly religious people ; the very persons who are 
most punctilious in their outward observances of re- 
ligion are frequently religion's worst enemies, not of 
course intentionally, and not always hypocritically, as 
many persons who are no hypocrites are simply thought- 
less conformists to an ancient habit, and go along with 
prescribed "devotions," because their ancestors Avere 
accustomed to say the prayers they repeat daily. 

Reform in religious worship today shows itself no- 
where so advantageously as in the changes made in old 
liturgies. Take the orthodox Jewish service for ex- 
ample. Not only is it tedious in the extreme on the 
mornings of all fasts and festivals, and a considerable 
tax on the ordinary attendant at a synagogue at the 
usual Sabbath morning service, not only does it contain 
no end of phrases utterly out of keeping with the best 
sentiment of the age and entirely foreign to the con- 
dition of all civilized communities, but on account of 
its extreme length and extraordinary complexion it is 
usually gabbled through with by the reader, while 
many of the congregation talk to each other in their 
seats, and scarcely make a show of giving it any atten- 
tion. Then we may ask, why do the} r attend the syn- 
agogue regularly; are we to censoriously condemn 
them and uncharitably number them among that worst 
element in the sect of the Pharisees which receives 
such scathing denunciation in the New Testament? 
Are we to conclude that they are sharks and Shylocks, 
men without mercy, pretenders to religion for the sake 
of gain ? By no means. They are simply superstitious, 
modern Kabalists of the unenlightened type ; shrewd 
men of business they often are, but frequently honest 



90 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

in their transactions, kind and merciful to the poor and 
the distressed, good husbands, fathers, brothers, citi- 
zens and friends ; they are simply in matters of religion 
creatures of habit ; they believe in some vague, myste- 
rious way that a peculiar value attaches to certain old 
forms of words muttered over in certain supposed holy 
places at holy times; they have borrowed from an- 
tiquity the customs of Oriental Kabalists without 
understanding, as the uninitiated never did understand, 
the inner significance of Kabalistic incantations. 

The enlightened spirit of today wants no Kabala, or 
if retaining one at least proposes to translate and under- 
stand it, and if employing it at all use it with the intel- 
lect, not ignorantly, as a savage employs a talisman. 
In the Episcopal Church of England and America, 
as well as in the Greek and Roman churches, we 
find many vestiges of Kabalism, though the ordinary 
English country squire does not look much like an 
Oriental advocate of mysticism. The principle, how- 
ever, is the same; you must go to church, you must 
read or say your prayers. As to praying, that is quite 
another thing, even an extemporaneous form of words 
is discountenanced by extreme liturgists; not even a 
clergyman is expected to pray except from memory or 
from a book ; the living thought and living word are 
checked in favor of stereotyped formularies, yet many 
attendants on Episcopal churches say they have every- 
thing they need in their prayer-book. They may have 
a " sound form of words," but soul cannot be printed, 
published and sold at every bookstand. 

We do not for a moment say that the Church of 
England service is not a beautiful compilation, and we 
do not deny that many a clergyman so reads the service 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 91 

that we can feel a real spiritual force emanating from 
the reader and inspiring us to lift up our hearts to God ; 
but too often the prayers are read off mechanically 
without awakening any responsive feelings in the 
hearts of the auditors, who ought to be, and pro- 
fessedly are, worshipers. Not only in churches where 
liturgies are employed, but in many denominations 
where they are frowned upon, prayers are studied 
beforehand, fixed up to look nice, committed to mem- 
ory until they look like dudes and dandies aping a 
clerical costume ; they sound like ripples of soft music 
on the cultured ear ; they are refined, scholarly, taste- 
ful, gentlemanly, ladylike, artistic, poetical prayers; 
but how often are they true prayers, how often are 
they prayers at all ? When the Angel of Prayer trav- 
els over the earth, according to a beautiful Eastern 
legend, to gather the prayers of humanity and bear 
them aloft to the throne of God, how much incense do 
you think he receives from the prayers of those who 
are renowned for the exquisite loveliness in which 
is couched their anything but heartfelt petitions? 
Nothing to us is more repellant than something not a 
prayer, trying to appear such ! We do not, we beg of 
you to remember, bring a charge of insincerity against 
'any sect of persons, neither do we urge the discontin- 
uance of any liturgy and litany any of you may find 
helpful in your own lives, but we do ask you to con- 
sider that you may teach children to say their prayers 
day and night, yet never teach them to pray. Indeed, 
it is hardly necessary to teach, or to try to teach them 
to pray. True prayer is spontaneous, ejaculatory ; it is 
involuntary, as natural as breath. It w T ould require an 
effort to keep it back ; to repress it would be to stran- 



92 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

gle, to suffocate spirituality. Just as where there is 
tire there is always smoke as a consequence, so where 
there is true devotion in the spirit, prayer results as a 
necessary consequence. What then about public pray- 
ers offered audibly in the midst of public assemblies by 
a person appointed to conduct or take part in a relig- 
ious service % All we can say is that if a real prayer is 
forthcoming in such a place at such a time, no matter 
whether the words are extemporized, read or given off 
from memory, the necessary conditions to make a 
prayer is that the soul dictates and speaks through the 
utterance. When that is the case every one in the 
rDom feels a spiritual presence and acknowledges the 
kindling of a supernal lire. Some advanced minds of 
today use the word aspiration instead of prayer. Per- 
haps it is on such occasions very often the fitter Avord 
of the two. To aspire is to pray ; it is to desire, to 
mentally ask, and therefore, physically, to place one's 
self in a receptive attitude to receive present bless- 
ings. Our own idea of true prayer is exceedingly 
simple; any child can understand it; and whenever 
we have been asked to address young people on 
prayer, we have found most of them catch the idea 
immediately. By prayer we no more undertake to 
change any law or reverse any established rule in 
nature than we do by opening a window, insert- 
ing a ventilator in a wall, ploughing the earth, irri- 
gating the soil, pruning the fruit trees, taking exercise, 
food, sleep, or a bath, or, in a word, doing any- 
thing to change outward conditions in ourselves or our 
surroundings, by intelligent compliance with natural 
demands, and by sagacious and industrious coopera- 
tion with nature's laws and provisions. Now, one of 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. D3 

the most formidable objections against pra\ T er is, we 
can neither change God nor nature. Certainly we can- 
not, and we do not attempt to. But there is no law of 
God or nature which, when we understand it, does not 
make provision for some exertion on our part, for some 
exercise of our free agency. To revert to the fatalistic 
objection, all our reply to the fatalist is, if everything 
is ordained, our prayers are ordained. We cannot, in 
that case, help praying, if we pray, and thus prayer be- 
comes a part of the universal plan, and must be recog- 
nized as a divinely appointed agent in bringing about a 
predetermined result. Many physicians and fatalists 
scoff at prayer ; they tell us all spiritual aid is sought 
in vain, but at the same time they give you powerful 
material remedies and tell vou that you are violating 
all reason and common sense if you do not swallow 
their nostrums. Now, on the plane of physical sense, 
called by some metaphysicians the substratum of the 
mortal mind, material agents doubtless have a certain 
value ; certainly that value must have been originally 
imparted to them by mind and can at any time be aug- 
mented or decreased and in many instances created, or 
removed in toto, by mental action. We say to all such 
objecting doctors, if you can believe in the potency of 
your drugs, minerals and manipulations, surely if you 
have the slightest apprehensions of spiritual relations 
at all ; you can conceive of prayer being effectual in 
healing the sick, if only by an excitation of those feel- 
ings and affections which in all cases must be aroused, 
or recovery is impossible. Prayer is a voluntary act of 
the mind, undertaken with a direct and specific object. 
Some special desire is uppermost in the mind, and by 
mental effort a sufferer, or a friend of a sufferer on his 



94 LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 

behalf, offers up a petition to the highest power he can 
spiritually or mentally apprehend, and in doing so he 
opens a window in his spiritual being through which 
healing sunshine and air can enter. The mind totally 
engrossed in worldly affairs, wholly occupied with mor- 
tal beliefs and pursuits, fails to realize the spiritual 
help which is ever ready to the hands of all who 
stretch out their hands to take it. You may suffocate 
on a windy day in a close room, no matter how much 
light or air there may be outside, if your windows are 
closed, your curtains drawn, every crevice hermetically 
sealed against approaches and influences from without. 
It is all in vain, so far as you are concerned, that the 
day is fine, the sun shining brightly, balmy breezes 
blowing and birds sweetly singing, if you are impris- 
oned in a cellar which you need not live in by any pro- 
vision of nature ; either by your own or another's 
wrong and foolish act you are doomed to unnatural in- 
carceration, into your chamber of death life-giving in- 
fluences, freely dispensed abroad for the good of all, 
cannot enter. Change all that, remove all those bar- 
riers which keep you from the enjoyment of universal 
benefactions, and without the slightest change having 
taken place in the order of nature, or any of God's ap- 
pointments, your condition is in an instant reversed. 
Prayer is the stretching out of a spiritual hand to unbar 
a door, to unlock a window, to open a ventilator in the 
chamber of the mind. Prayer is answered, and the 
posture of the mind is of the utmost importance. We 
may open our windows to the north, and invite the 
cold, bleak breezes from the pole, or we may open them 
to the south and welcome the warm breezes from the 
tropics ; we can make our rooms front to the east and 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. $5 

thereby enjoy the morning sun, or we can face the west 
and see only its setting glories ; or we can have rooms 
so constructed that there are windows all round, and 
then from all points of the compass we can derive the 
invigoration and blessing nature so freely bestows on 
all who ask for a share in her bounties. Let us be very 
wary of praying unadvisedly to God for what only a 
power of darkness could grant ; let us be extremely 
careful, ever on our guard, lest selfishness, jealousy, 
and fear, or any unjust rivalries or unduly emulous 
feeling should dictate our prayer, and thus bring us 
into relation with the very elements and agents we 
most desire and need to shun. Above all things, let 
us never consent to pray for anything we do not con- 
scientiously feel it would be for the best interests of 
humanity for us to have, for wherever self and self- 
love are uppermost in our hearts, wherever our affec- 
tions are inordinately set on private advantage, wher- 
ever our own personal welfare or that of some indi- 
vidual we elect to unduly favor, dictates petition, we 
do not pray in truth or for truth, we do not pray in 
the spirit of universal love or wisdom, and therefore 
do not enter into true relations with any beneficent 
source whence divine inspiration can proceed. In our 
next address we will indulge in further explanations 
and specific illustrations, and take up the latest theo- 
sophical deliverance on this question, with a view 
to aiding you to put prayer to as much good use as 
possible. 



LECTUKE V. 



PRAYER AS A HEALING AGENT. PART II. 



PRAYER TO GOD AND TO INDIVIDUAL SPIRITS. HOW, WHY, 

AND UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES IS IT ANSWERED ? 

IN our last address we - laid what we intended to be, 
and we hope will prove, a solid and reasonable foun- 
dation for what is now to follow on the all-absorbing 
question of the nature and efficacy of prayer, especially 
as applied to the healing of the sick. It may strike 
some of our hearers and readers, that we do not confine 
ourselves very closely to the simple fact of healing ; 
we do not attempt or desire to do so in any restricted 
sense, as we do not regard the power to heal the sick 
as a solitary gift or endowment, but rather as a result 
of a combination of powers and developments in the 
successful practitioner. That there is such a gift as the 
gift of healing, or that there are such gifts as the gifts 
of healing, as Paul start es in his epistle to the Corin- 
thians, we freely admit, and all such gifts we gladly 
recognize whenever our attention is called to their 
spontaneous outburst. But then there are an immense 
variety of gifts, all of which are so closely allied to 
acquirements that it is almost impossible to separate 
one from the other, fully. Take music as an illustra- 
tion, and Mozart as a sample of natural genius. It is 
perfectly true that the gift of music, the fire of natural 

96 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 97 

genius very conspicuously manifested itself in him 
while he was yet a little boy, still, no one who is in the 
slightest degree acquainted with the history of his sub- 
sequent career can ever fail to admire his earnest and 
persistent endeavor to utilize that gift to its very 
utmost. "When he composed his greatest works he was 
both a gifted and an educated musician. 

We think it is a grave error to preach a doctrine of 
human irresponsibility in the presence of divine and 
natural gifts ; for, though we are not responsible for 
our natural and unsolicited abilities, and we are not de- 
serving either of praise or blame for what seems thrust 
upon us by a power which acts independently of our 
volition, we are without question very deeply respon- 
sible for the use we make of the gifts bestowed, and we 
think if you study the matter carefully you will all arrive 
at the conclusion that in many instances gifts are re- 
wards, and genius is the outgrowth of applied energy. 
Many persons who believe in and advocate what is 
called the " prayer cure," use a spiritual power which 
they do not understand, almost at random. Their in- 
tentions are excellent, their motives sincere, their dis- 
positions benevolent, and, as a consequence of their 
real desire to help humanity through their intercession 
with the Almight} 7 , they are instrumental in many 
cases in raising up those who are seemingly on the 
brink of the grave. But they give offence to many 
equally well disposed people whose minds take a more 
scientific turn as their methods seem to such to savor 
of fanaticism and superstition, while scientists of every 
name appear almost blasphemous to the simple-minded 
enthusiasts who recognize God as a Supreme Sovereign 
over all natural law with which, according to their 



98 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

theory, He interferes on their behalf in answer to their 
cry. 

Now two facts have to be taken into consideration 
and carefully met in these present days; truths can 
never antagonize, facts can never be opposed to each 
other, however much they may appear to disagree. If 
we cannot reconcile truth with truth, and fact with 
fact, it is no argument against the perfect friendliness 
of all truths and facts to each other ; it simply shows 
to us how limited are our powers and how small our 
knowledge. 

Nothing seems more incontestable than the propo- 
sition that there is only one law of the universe which 
can never be reversed or set aside from its regular 
course under any circumstances whatever ; with this 
law no Deity ever seems to interfere. The further we 
advance in scientific studies, the more deeply we inves- 
tigate the mysteries of being, the more certain do we 
feel that there is an eternal, immutable, irreversible law 
which never varies. On the other hand the burden of 
proof on the side of the reality of what are called mir- 
acles (now occurring) is so overwhelming that we are 
forced, no matter how unwillingly on the part of some 
of us, to what at first sight looks like a counterconclu- 
sion, viz., that there is some power in the universe, and 
moreover, a power somewhat subject to .the will and 
prayer of man, which does set aside what are common- 
ly regarded as the fixed laws of nature. Out of the 
first part of our statement Atheists derive all their sup- 
port, and out of the second portion of it believers in 
miracles derive their argument. 

Now we think it only requires a little diligent study 
of nature, law and miracles to reveal to us the fallacy 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 99 

of Atheism and the equal fallacy of what is often des- 
ignated supernaturalism. The truth lies between these 
two extremes or poles of thought. Granting an im- 
mutable law is not necessarily granting anything more 
than an immutable Deity. If God is immutable and if 
the law of nature is His law, why should it not be or 
how can it not be immutable like its author. The mu- 
tability of earthly laws springs from the mutability of 
their framers and enforcers. The immutability of di- 
vine law (and natural law is divine) springs from the 
fact that God never changes, and therefore his mode of 
action never changes. Universal law is, correctly speak- 
ing, neither more nor less than the unvarying habit of 
the Infinite Being. But to grant the immutability of 
law is only to grant one of its characteristics. An im- 
mutable law may be kind, cruel, wise, foolish, just, un- 
just, and still immutable. It may make infinite room 
for human freedom or no room for it at all, and yet be 
immutable. The single attribute of immutability cov- 
ers relatively very little of the ground we desire to go 
over, and we shall never understand our subject if we 
confine ourselves to a cold, sterile belief in immutable 
law or even in an unchanging God, unless we go further 
into an examination of what the law is we agree in 
calling immutable. 

It is an immutable law, so far as any one can dis- 
cover, that an egg requires just so much heat to hatch 
the bird out of it. Nature left to herself provides 
the heat in the body of the mother bird, but does 
not refuse to allow you to invent an artificial incu- 
bator. A certain amount of heat is imperatively 
demanded, that must be supplied or the chicken will 
not be hatched, but nature does not seem to lay clown 



100 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

any arbitrary law as to where the heat comes from or 
how it shall be generated. A law stares us in the face 
which we cannot get over, we cannot hatch the chicken 
without heat ; but if you can devise unusual means for 
generating and supplying that heat, nature allows the 
result you desire to follow just as though the ordinary 
measures had been adopted. 

The most surprising wonders of the Orient, accord- 
ing to those who have most carefully studied them, 
are just as amenable to a fixed and universal law as are 
the most common occurrences of every day life. If a 
mango tree blossoms in a few minutes from the seed of 
a gourd, nature's processes are simply accelerated by 
unwonted aid, and what is known as forcing is car- 
ried on to an extent so surprising as to suggest to the 
uninitiated the idea of a suspension of natural law. 
Now when we pray do we or do we not put forward 
some energy which brings about a result ? Is there or 
is there not something going from the suppliant to the 
one who is eventually healed, or in the case of prayer 
for one's own recovery, is there or is there not some- 
thing used by the patient to heal himself ? "We believe 
that whenever a person uses prayer and succeeds in 
healing himself by means of it he uses a spiritual force 
within himself which is just as much, yea, far more a 
remedial agent than any physician's prescription can be. 
"When he prays for another and that other is healed 
apparently in direct answer to prayer, as no other rea- 
son can be assigned for his unexpected recovery, a 
force is communicated to the sufferer, from the one 
who offers prayer that he may get well ; the cure is 
therefore performed in what is really a perfectly 
natural way, albeit in a manner usually called super- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 101 

natural by those who limit nature to the narrow 
domain of their own personal acquaintance with it. 
We know many people will step up just here and tell 
us we are ruling God out of all our calculations, ignor- 
ing divine aid and substituting for it some magical vir- 
tue inherent in human nature. We are doing nothing 
of the kind, though we are acknowledging the opera- 
tion of divine power in its own way and through its 
own appointed channels. It is an unmistakable fact in 
nature that we must all sow in order to reap, or even 
if we apparently reap what others have sown, the very 
act of reaping implies effort ; we get nothing for 
nothing, whatever we obtain we have got hold of hv 
the putting forward of some energy physical or mental ; 
it does not then appear that God chooses to work for 
us independently of us, and if we can be sure of one 
thing more than another, we can feel most abundantly 
certain that God insists upon it that we shall work for 
one another and be his agents and ministers in dispens- 
ing his blessings among our fellow beings. Christian 
Scientists, as they call themselves, are very apt to 
speak in ignorance disparagingly of the assistance 
rendered b} T spirit friends to their kindred on earth, 
but whenever they do so they resort to worn-out plati- 
tudes concerning the privilege we enjoy of going 
directly to God and thereby avoiding the necessity of 
relying in any sense on human or angelic instrumen- 
tality. Their aguments usually fall worthless to the 
ground by reason of their perpetual misstatement of 
views they undertake to denounce. JVTen of straw are 
built up with much elaborateness and then with great 
energy demolished. More than once we have been 
told that we were guilty of a species of idolatry if we 



102 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

imagined we could do anything to assist God. As we 
never imagined we could assist the Infinite the arrow 
was pointless and hit nowhere ; but if we gratefully 
acknowledge the Infinite Goodness in working by us 
and through us to accomplish his beneficent designs 
while we confessedly owe everything to God, we do not 
refuse to acknowledge the modes of divine operation 
chosen by the Infinite Mind. If you give a treatment 
and that treatment is successful, no matter how you 
give it, you employ energy in giving it ; if it is only a 
lesson in truth, you must so present the truth that it 
will be accepted or the lesson is not received. To bring 
the truth home with power to the mind of your 
patient is the one thing needful ; to do so you must ex- 
ercise your own spiritual nature in harmony with the 
divine intent. Prayer seems to us nothing more than 
spiritual effort ; incantations are vain, mere words are 
valueless in themselves, formulas are dead letters unless 
a living spirit breathes through them ; but when what 
Montgomery calls " the soul's sincere desire unuttered 
or expressed, the motion of a hidden fire which trem- 
bles in the breast," is brought into active exercise with 
beneficent intent, work is being done, the soul is en- 
gaged in profitable industry, and the answer to prayer 
comes through the'working of that universal law which 
compensates the toiler for his effort. Now let us look 
at some of the aspects of this question of prayer which 
call for especial review at the present time. All over 
Christian Europe, Jesus and his mother are said to have 
appeared in certain places, performed miracles there 
and ordained that pilgrims who visit consecrated 
shrines should be made whole, no matter what disorder 
they may be laboring under. These shrines have been 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 103 

and still are sources of immense benefit in a financial 
sense to the Koman Catholic Church. Witness the 
magnificent church at Lourdes erected through the 
offerings of pilgrims, see the crutches hanging up in 
many of the churches, see the medals reaching from 
floor to ceiling in many a lofty chapel, and then inquire 
into the likelihood of the apparitions which gave birth 
to such singular devotion. Easily enough you may 
dismiss the whole subject with a sneer, and having con- 
temptuously hissed out "nothing but superstition, 1 ' 
refuse to bestow any further thought on the matter. 
The question then arises, is not superstition a therapeu- 
tic agent of great value ? and if people are by nature 
superstitious let superstition be cultivated by all means 
if it produces such benign results ; but we cannot dis- 
miss the subject in any such summary manner, — there 
is something far more real than superstition at the bot- 
tom of these " miracles of healing," as they are called. 
An undoubted spiritual power is at work in all those 
places, and to find out what that power is and how it 
works is one of the most interesting and useful psycho- 
logical studies of. the day. No further away than 
Hoboken Monastery, in New York, and the Portuguese 
Church in North Bennett Street, Boston, have persons 
been cured of long-standing and distressful maladies 
when brought face to face with " holy relics " at 
Hoboken, and water from a " holy well " in Boston. 
Then among Protestants we have the striking case of 
Dr. Cullis' work at the Consumptives' Home, Eoxbury, 
where nothing but simple prayer is relied on. Patients 
do recover ; though some do not, the fact that any 
respectable percentage get well is enough to commend 
the mode of cure to enlightened study. A very perti- 



101 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

nent query sometimes indeed often raised is, do not the 
patients carry enough faith with them to cure them 
any way, and is not the simple fact of the mental tran- 
quillity and hopefulness consequent upon that faith a 
sufficient reason for their cure ? We have to answer in 
the light of facts, in a few instances yes, but in the 
majority of cases no ; for the surprising feature of the 
subject is that some who have faith are not cured, and 
those who have no faith to start with get well the 
soonest. Usually a positive, determined mind is influ- 
enced by its own beliefs and unbeliefs far more than a 
susceptible, pliant individual who easily yields, often 
without knowing it, to the beliefs of those around 
him. Belief seems a somewhat positive attitude of 
the mind. If one believes anything it seems as 
though he has thought about it and come to some 
kind of a conclusion regarding it; but when a per- 
son is totally ignorant of the theory or method of 
practice, and is carried helpless into an institution, 
expecting perhaps to die in a few clays or weeks 
at the most, if he is cured under any kind of treat- 
ment his own mind can have very Jittle to do with 
the result attained. Of course an invisible and 
unsuspected power may work silently and secretly 
upon his mind and bear fruit afterwards in his recov- 
ery, but that power belonged outside of himself, it 
came fr;>m outside influences, not from any original 
belief or expectation of his own. Many prayers 
exercise a mesmeric influence over a patient; they 
lull him to sleep, soothe away his pain as they lull 
him into the arms of prayerfulness ; they play the 
part of anaesthetics and render the entranced sub- 
ject, while in a singularly negative condition, pecu- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 105 

liarly susceptible to the beliefs and wishes of those 
around him. 

Cures are performed by mesmerism; this we know, 
and can prove by many thoroughly well-authenticated 
instances ; but a question arises, are they permanent ? 
often we confess they are not. The question now 
arises, so long as really healed, does, it matter how 
they are healed? Is not one method of cure as good 
as another, and if all kinds of prayers addressed to 
all kinds of divinities are available what matters it 
whether we profess a true religion or a false \ Eight 
here in the use of the word religion comes the answer. 
True religion is a matter of principle, of right feeling, 
of noble emotion, of inspiring sentiment, rather than 
of rigidly defined intellectual admissions. Religion is 
a question of love, of purity, of magnanimity, of fer- 
vent aspiration. It centers in the love of all good and 
of humanity ; it is good and seeks to do good ; it pro- 
ceeds from the soul rather than from the intellect, and 
thus is far more a matter of the heart than of the 
head. If people were truly pious in their lives because 
they held certain doctrines and approached God in 
certain forms of words while all others were impious, 
we should then be compelled to look upon intellectual 
exactitude as necessary to salvation ; but when we find 
the most excellent and truly religious people holding 
diametrically opposite views on all questions which 
can be submitted to the intellect, we are compelled to 
look deeper than opinion to find the secret of spiritual 
life and growth without which all ceremonies and in- 
vocations are empty forms and hollow mockeries. 
Whenever prayer is sincere it is an uplifting of the 
spirit to a plane of being which the spirit in its hour 



106 LECTU.EE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

of need recognizes as real and present, or at all events 
near enough to be communicated with. 

We hear much nowadays of mind-reading and 
thought transference; Ave hear and read much of 
curious experiments tending to prove the palpability 
of thought and the possibility of one mind communi- 
cating with another without any kind of contact be- 
tween bodies; and while there is of course much 
difference of opinion among the learned as to the 
nature of the force which is employed in the trans- 
mission of ideas from one mind to another, the general 
impression seems to be that there is a subtle force 
within us and around us, subtler by far than elec- 
tricity, which does a work in mind in the transmission 
of intelligence analogous to that performed by the 
electric fluid on the sensuous plane of communion. In 
every instance of thought transference we hear of cer- 
tain conditions being necessary to success, the experi- 
ments being successful only when some subtle and 
mysterious requirements are fulfilled, these require- 
ments oftentimes being of so unknown a character 
that the phenomena are noted more for their erraticity 
and incomprehensibility than for anything else. Just 
as it is necessary to employ machinery and apparatus 
in the conduct of electrical experiments, just as the 
telegraphic wires cannot be dispensed with in the 
transmission of intelligence from point to point, so 
in the subtler realm of mental interaction something 
analogous must be established to bring two minds 
en rapport with each other. Prayer seems in one at 
least of its phases to be the sending forth of a subtle 
force from within ourselves which grasps some power 
beyond us with which we desire to ally ourselves, no 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 107 

matter to whom we pray. The personage addressed, 
though a fancied historical character, may be after all 
only a myth, still we do lay hold of something and 
some one, we do get a response somehow from some- 
where, and it is a response which in many instances 
answers perfectly to our idea of the being we ad- 
dressed in our prayer. ISTow it seems to us incredible 
that an impossible or a non-existent character should 
ever have found its way into human thought or litera- 
ture. 

Novels we have in abundance; so-called works of 
fiction are plenteous as daisies in spring, but are works 
of fiction, works of fiction in the strict sense after all I 
"Where do the characters come from ? Are there no actual 
patterns after which the writer copies ? Are not novels 
very often simple biographies more or less distorted, 
names, dates and places changed, personages consider- 
ably mixed, but still the whole tale made up from real 
life ? It is an open secret that popular novelists put people 
of their acquaintance into their books and often travel 
and seek society for the purpose of collecting material 
for fresh romance. Supposing the myriad personages 
involved in prayer by the various bodies of worshipers 
the world over were for the most part fictional ideals, 
still they would have their counterparts in real life, 
each one would stand out distinct from all others as the 
embodiment of some especial quality, and an invocation 
to an imaginary being possessed of such quality would 
bring the mind of the suppliant into relation with some 
real being in whom that particular characteristic was 
peculiarly prominent. Suppose now, for the sake of 
argument, Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Historical 
evidence of his existence is extremely slender and many 



108 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

modern critics assume that he was merely a mythical or 
an ideal personage. If that be so are we forced to con- 
clude that all the prayers ever offered to him are fruit- 
less, that they represent just so much wasted energy 
and idle breath ? Such a conclusion would be too piti- 
ably cruel for us to entertain for a single instant. The 
value of prayer is in its spiritual fervor and intensity, 
and if one prays to Jesus with an ideal before him and 
with the sole object of conforming his life nearer to 
the standard of that ideal, if he invokes that to help 
him to become more like itself, such petitions instead of 
being valueless are ladders to living spheres of spiritual 
being, and it matters not whether there ever was on 
earth a human personality who lived out that ideal in 
mortal form. The ideal in the human mind is a reflec- 
tion caught from the realm of spirit ; it is exceedingly 
probable that history more or less clearly proves the 
outward manifestation of the ideal; but if history does 
not, prophecy assuredly does, and the future condition 
of mankind on earth is a condition already reached in 
spiritual being somewhere and reflected upon the con- 
sciousness of those yet dwelling amid the shadows of 
materiality. 

Now take away from the character of Jesus all that 
savors of' what is commonly termed the miraculous and 
supernatural, draw aside the curtains of mythology and 
let the human personality stand out in all its spiritual 
and natural loveliness ; forget all theories of a miracu- 
lous conception, throw to the winds all thought of any- 
thing other than a pure and perfect manhood, think of 
Jesus only as an elder brother, in a word take the view 
of him which Theodore Parker took, and what have 
you to contemplate but a human being who has reached 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 109 

a nobler height of holiness and devotion to truth than 
the rest of mankind. As Moses was the greatest law- 
giver mentioned in Jewish history, as Phidias was the 
greatest sculptor known to Greece, as Confucius was 
the greatest ethical teacher and reformer known to the 
Chinese, so Jesus was the greatest spiritual light known 
to Christendom. But some will say, and with great 
showing of truth, there is no evidence that any one 
man ever lived in whom all moral excellences met; 
have not historians borrowed from many and many a 
person, many and many a clime, and decked their 
chosen hero in many borrowed garments which were 
not rightfully his own ? Such may be the case, but 
even if it is, it does not alter the fact that there are 
human beings, if not a solitarv human being, in whom 
these excellences have met ; the whole glory may not 
belong to one alone, it may be the joint possession of a 
great multitude, but the hope of relating one's self to 
those realms of intelligence and virtue in which such 
moral beauties are outwrought in beneficent conduct 
is not a baseless dream, it is a well-grounded con- 
fidence. 

Surely there are no skeptics who will not admit 
as much as this. Nothing can be in the world's his- 
tory which transcends the attainment of the human 
mind. If Shakespeare was not the author of the plays 
which bear 'his name. Lord Bacon or somebody else 
wrote them, they did not write themselves. They 
are written and some mind or minds must have lived 
adequate to the task of producing them. So with 
Homer ; if such a man as Homer is generally supposed 
to have been never lived, the Illiad and Odyssey being 
in existence were brought into existence by an intelli- 



110 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

gence adequate to the task of their production ; and so 
with the ethical teachings of Jesus, they have been given 
to the world some where, by some one, at some time. 

Beyond that point where the baldest skepticism 
may possibly stop, we as gnostics rather than agnostics 
necessarily go, knowing that no life perishes, that no 
mind fades away : that all intelligence enjoys a career 
immortal. We confidently proclaim our unfaltering 
conviction that if you in sincerity of purpose fervently 
address a plane of being called by you by any name 
you please, or by no name at all if you cannot give it 
a name, you enter into living relation with that very 
degree of mind which made the teachings and products 
you most admire possible on earth. You may then 
have an erroneous idea of personality, you may address 
the name of a myth, but you address the real spirit 
which you are endeavoring to find and commune with 
it beyond the myth which partially obscures your 
mental horizon. No doubt many divinities invoked by 
many nations are mythical creations, so far as their 
literal history is concerned, and we can none of us 
doubt that many "saints " have been canonized because 
of services they rendered and offerings they made to 
the church, while their characters up to the very last 
were anything but saintly, their death bed repentances 
and conversions being unreal, as they were only in- 
duced by fear and in the hope of escaping deserved 
punishment and winning unmerited reward after 
the death of the body. These " saints " are, no 
doubt, at this moment, many of them, in a very 
dark and unprogressed condition in spirit-life, and 
utterly beyond the reach of the adorations of those 
who invoke them. 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. Ill 

Still the suppliant has before him a mental image 
of true sanctity, he invokes an ideal in his own mind, 
and when he does so he forms a connecting link be- 
tween himself and some being or beings who really do 
represent the ideal height he desires to reach, and from 
which he is laboring to win a response. 

Paganism and Romanism alike acknowledge an im- 
mense number of lesser divinities somewhat corres- 
ponding to the Elohim or Dcmiuryos of the Kabala. 
One of these divinities is supposed to protect the one 
who seeks his or her patronage from drowning, another 
shields from land accidents, another from fire, another 
helps his charge to the acquisition of wealth, another 
finds and restores stolen property, while others whose 
missions are more spiritual assist those who invoke 
them to the acquisition of graces and the development 
of their higher nature generally. If there were no such 
thing as communion with departed spirits at all these 
prayers would not be in vain, as the very desire to en- 
ter into relation with a certain type of mind would in- 
troduce the petitioner into the sphere of other indi- 
viduals on earth whose mental exhalations fill the air 
and affect us more or less powerfully as we become re- 
ceptive or non-receptive, according to the bent of our 
desire. 

We come now to an intensely practical part of our 
subject, viz.: the means whereby and the reasons why 
persons affect each other so powerfully under some con- 
ditions, and scarcely at all under others. Spiritual 
science teaches you before all things the paramount 
necessity of properly directing your thought and 
wisely using your will. A true spiritual scientist is 
never a mesmeric dupe, never a victim of an} x and 



112 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

every influence which may be floating by. We must 
try the spirits in the fullest sense, i.e., put every influ- 
ence which approaches us to the test of reason and 
conscience, and never allow ourselves to be blindly led 
by the passing breeze in whatever direction it may be 
blowing. 

An incalculable amount of danger may be avoided 
and misery averted if persons will only act by intuition 
and by reason, not by blind impulse. Untold misery 
is occasioned by that prevalent externalism abounding 
everywhere which teaches the child from his earliest 
breath to bow to authority and bend to custom. We 
must set rather than follow fashion ; though ever ready 
to take advice, we can never be too careful in hesitat- 
ing to follow an impression because it is an impression. 
An impression is not an intuition, as an intuition is an 
impulse of the soul, while an impression is only an im- 
press made upon our mind by some effluence of an- 
other's mind which is at the moment in our vicinage. 

When we have settled the point that thought is a 
substance, when we realize with sufficient vividity that 
we are constantly praying to others while others are 
praying to us, that every thought, desire, wish, and 
certainly every effort of will is a prayer, we shall see 
that we are both praying and answering prayers con- 
tinually. Prayer is aspiration, desire, will, request ; so 
when an apostle said, "Pray without ceasing," and 
coupled with that injunction, " Watch and pray," aspi- 
ration and vigilance were estimated at their true val- 
ues and placed in their rightful relations. We must 
not only watch as well as pray, but we must watch, 
and that carefully, ere we pray. We must not allow 
ourselves to pray for anything and everything ; it is a 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 113 

mischievous fallacy to suppose that because God can- 
not answer a prayer for what is evil, and no good an- 
gel can reply to it either, that therefore it goes unan- 
swered ; it is most assuredly responded to from that 
state of mind toward which it gravitates and with 
which it is in sympathy. We have known children as 
well as brigands to steal, and pray that they might not 
be found out. We have known people to deliberately 
set out upon an evil course, and before they undertook 
to plunder their fellow- creatures, offer up a prayer for 
success in their nefarious undertaking. Now are such 
prayers harmless, do they amount to nothing? Are 
they mere wasted breath ? We might wish they were, 
but as it is they are causes of the direst misery, as they 
link those who offer them with the powers of dark- 
ness, and these powers of darkness which inhabit the 
air are none other than other minds similarly inten- 
tioned who clasp hold of all who invoke any myste- 
rious or unknown power to aid them in a work of evil. 
If prayers for evil ends are answered are we not then 
in continual danger? Yes, but only when we do not 
curb our lower instincts ; only when we encourage, or 
at least allow the baser proclivities of our nature to 
assert themselves. 

Obsession is doubtless a fact, but it is occasioned by 
low and evil thoughts and desires, by those very 
thoughts which necessarily lead to vicious practices 
whenever indulged in. Metaphysical healing makes a 
dead set against errors in mind ; it utters its protests 
with clarion voice against all secret thoughts of evil ; 
it does not and cannot stop where physiology and san- 
itary legislation are compelled to stop, at the making 
clean of the outside of the cup and platter. 



114 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

Metaphysicians frequently say very little about 
outward practices, why? but because they know the 
truth of the adage, "Out of the abundance of the 
heart the mouth speaketh." It would indeed be a 
blessed thing for the world if prohibitory legislation 
could put down evil, but does it ? Alas, no ! In a re- 
public prohibitory legislation is impossible if the peo- 
ple are not sufficiently well disposed to desire it, as laws 
can only be made by the people, and they will never 
make better laws than they desire, and they will only 
desire good ones when they are morally and mentally 
enlightened. And then again, if a prohibitory law is 
passed and enforced where people are too vicious to 
appreciate wise legislation, they resort to every con- 
ceivable artifice to evade it, and their moral progress is 
therefore retarded rather than advanced by pressure 
brought to bear from the outside. Education and 
Moral Suasion are the only two possible means of 
bringing about reform ; force is impossible, utterly im- 
practicable, unless you are dealing with serfs and sav- 
ages, and even then it only leads in the long run to 
mutiny and revolt and an exhibition of the most fla- 
grant vices possible to humanity. Some Socialists, we 
know, laugh at moral suasion, others distrust its 
power; almost all believe in improved legislation and 
state interference as the sovereign remedy for existing 
ills, but how are they to get improved legislation, how 
are they to get a well-organized state, without educa- 
tion and moral suasion ? If some like the word educa- 
tion, and do not favor the words moral suasion, how, 
we should like to know, are they going to separate the 
two unless they rob education of all its moral elements 
and thus reduce it to an artificial and utterly ineffect- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 115 

ual attempt to accomplish the impossibility of raising 
mankind to a higher level without appealing to the 
only lever which can lift society, viz., the moral sense. 

Intellectual and physical culture alone are misera- 
bly inadequate to evolve a perfect state. Greece, 
Rome, Babylonia, Chaldea, and multitudes of ancient 
names stand eloquently forth in history, vetoing any 
such absurd attempt. The nations which fell away 
most completely from virtue and at length from mate- 
rial prosperity also, those which have been utterly 
destroyed, and whose ruins alone remain to tell the 
tale of their once glory have fallen when culture was 
at its height and schools were crowded with learners. 

The one thing needful in education was unhappily 
left out, and that was moral and spiritual culture. 
Healing by spiritual power means healing the mind of 
evil thoughts, exorcising the demons of impure wishes ; 
and as every physician and sanitarian knows disease 
and vice, health and virtue are intimate associates, the 
true spiritual healer must minister to a mind diseased, 
to affections depraved, and by inducing first the love 
of virtue and begetting in the patient's mind the under- 
standing of it will soon find that as all growth proceeds 
from the center outwards, not from the circumference 
inwards, so it is impossible to change fruit without 
changing the condition of the root from which it 
springs. Just as the use of cosmetics can never purify 
the blood or impart the natural glow of health to the 
cheek, as all the beauty of skin stimulated by rouge, 
pearl powder and other vain and injurious compounds, 
products of an age of insincerity and sham is indeed 
less than skin deep and tends to increase rather than 
lessen the pallor caused by sickness, as such prepara- 



110) LECTURE EY W. J. C0LVILLE. 

tions clog the pores and prevent that natural action of 
the skin which is indispensable to health, so all 
attempts at glossing over defects and making persons 
act and speak well without any motive power from 
within impelling them to do so can only intensify 
instead of relieving the moral maladies under which 
society groans. 

We must devise some more radical means of 
improving the morals of the rising generation than 
plrysiological text-books 'will supply. When well 
written they are good as far as they go, but they lack 
all power of appeal to the spiritual nature. Boys and 
girls are told if they indulge in sexual excesses they 
will suffer from nervous debility, that as they grow 
older diseases will overtake them when they least 
expect it ; they will lose health, strength and powers 
of enjoyment by contracting vicious habits. All this 
is true enough, no one can dispute it ; but we fail to 
see how an address to selfishness, or at the best an appeal 
to the animal instinct of self-preservation as conspicu- 
ous in rats as it is in man, hoAV an appeal to fear of 
consequences falling upon lawless indulgences can do 
much to stimulate that moral and mental force without 
which it is extremely difficult, almost impossible to 
restrain the passions. 

A spiritual treatment succeeds where the physio- 
logical argument fails, because the former induces the 
dormant spiritual energy in the one treated to come 
forth, assert its power, and hold the lower impulses in 
check. Spiritual healing is the victory of spirit over 
sense, of mind over matter, and true prayer addressed 
in all sincerity to infinite purity cannot fail to arouse 
in the one who prays thus, that very moral vigor 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 117 

which is more than a match for all the wiles and seduc- 
tions of the lower nature. When we pray for another 
we should never desire or expect more than this, to 
enter into some blessed fellowship with the powers of 
light in such a manner as to assist in the awakening 
of the divine light within the sufferer or sinner in 
whom it a while lies dormant. Prayer is spiritual 
effort, the truest, noblest and most earnest work in 
which we can possibly engage. 



LECTUKE VI. 



MIND-READING, THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE AND KINDRED PHE- 
NOMENA. WHAT IS THEIR SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION? 

THE columns of the daily and weekly newspapers 
being at the present time almost filled with ac- 
counts of more or less successful experiments in what 
is properly termed Mind Keading, we have chosen as 
the topic of our discourse tonight some of the more 
familiar phases and aspects of this singular and inter- 
esting phenomenon, feeling sure our hearers and readers 
(for this discourse is being reported in extenso) will be 
interested in hearing what we have to offer on an 
always attractive but just at present peculiarly 
seasonable topic. You are doubtless all of you 
pretty thoroughly familiar with the now widely ac- 
cepted theory of animal magnetism. You all have 
heard and read and perhaps experienced something 
of its alleged marvelous potency, and while many 
of you are willing to lay it aside for what you feel 
to be a higher revelation of truth, you cannot but 
admit that the theory of its existence on the sensuous 
plane of thought is both tenable and logical. The 
magnetic theory, as we understand it, is practically 
this : The human body is an aggregation of molecules 
or minute particles of matter kept in a constant state 
of frictional motion by means of that subtle power we 
call life. As long as life operates upon these molecules 

118 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 119 

their activities are continuous, but when life retires 
their wonted movements are instantly and finally sus- 
pended so far as their remaining part of a particular 
body is concerned. The constant friction of atoms must 
necessarily produce an energy, or force, an emanation 
or effluence, hard to define, perhaps, but nevertheless to 
be palpably felt, and under certain conditions suscep- 
tible of analysis. That heat and moisture are con- 
stantly being thrown off from the human body no one 
can deny, and no one, we should think, could accord to 
heat and moisture no properties. 

On the plane of physical existence animal magnet- 
ism operates as all material forces operate ; this subtle 
fluid emanation is without doubt communicable from 
one person to another, with or without contact con- 
sciously or unconsciously on the part of both the donor 
and recipient. K*ow in mind-reading, or thought trans- 
ference, animal magnetism plays a very subordinate 
part, as ideas are what we have to deal with rather 
than physical sensations. Animal magnetism, if it 
ever acts as a therapeutic agent, if it ever aids in the 
relief of pain or the cure of organic disease, can only 
act as food or any physical remedy can act ; it cannot 
convey ideas or act as a self -intelligent agent in the 
conveyance of mental impressions ; but when we turn 
our thoughts from the bod} 7 to the spirit, from matter 
to mind, we can readily see how closely analogous 
magnetism on the physical plane may be to thought on 
the mental. 

Thought is without doubt a substance, a something 
real, tangible, objective to the senses of the spiritual 
body, and we must never forget that man on earth is a 
spiritual being, the possessor of a spiritual body which 



120 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

he will continue to inhabit when the mortal form has 
crumbled into dust. Man, then, on earth has latent 
within him all the potencies and capabilities of so-called 
departed spirits. Death does not revolutionize charac- 
ter, neither does it necessarily produce any immediate 
change in the moral and mental status of an individual. 
Departed spirits, as those are usually called who, to use 
Shakespeare's language, " have shuffled off this mortal 
coil," are not necessarily either more or less advanced 
than you, and our most decided conviction is that with- 
out a solitary exception, if you were every one of you 
to pass out of earthly existence at this moment, you 
would each one commence your progress in the unseen 
world at that precise point in your development which 
you had reached the instant prior to experiencing the 
change called death. If this inference be correct, 
and both Spiritualism and reason endorse it, we can 
surely see our way towards an amicable settlement of 
many differences of opinion between Spiritualists and 
others which occasion much unpleasant controversy 
and the manifestation of much hard feeling on both 
sides. 

Metaphysicians, Theosophists and Spiritualists are 
for the most part all laboring to the same end, and 
frequently they are only calling the same thing by 
three different names, and thus their dispute is rather 
over the name by which the flower shall be called than 
over the rose itself, whose fragrance is not affected by 
any name which may be given to it, — to allude again 
to Shakespeare and borrow from him an illustration. 
The experiments with Irving Bishop which have formed 
the subject of so much discussion of late are extremely 
simple and can very easily be explained by an intelli- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 121 

gent student of spiritual science. Such experiments 
are valuable more on account of their bringing meta- 
physical and spiritual matters before a class of the 
community often hard to reach by less sensational 
methods than on account of any great inherent virtue 
they may possess, as they constitute only the alphabet 
of Spiritualism, and explain only the very first princi- 
ples of metaphysics or theosophy. 

What is thought? is a question ever recurring. 
How is thought generated? does the brain secrete it? 
Is it dependent upon an organized brain for its exist- 
ence, or is it rather an independent reality which man- 
ifests itself outwardly through the brain, using the 
brain as the vehicle of its expression, while the brain 
has no power to produce it but only to make it out- 
wardly manifest ? These and hundreds of allied ques- 
tions are being raised continually in the present state 
of psychological controversy, and it is our object in this 
address to make an attempt to discuss and if possible 
to answer a few of them. 

Now in the first place it always strikes us that the 
great fundamental error in materialism is that the ma- 
terialist reverses the natural order, and while of course 
recognizing both cause and effect, declares cause to be 
effect, and effect to be cause, falling therefore into the 
precise error called in a homely proverb, " putting the 
cart before the horse." A few simple axioms or tru- 
isms which no one can successfully dispute seem to us 
to thoroughly confute materialistic reasoning. Take, 
for instance, the following which we believe are almost 
universally admitted to be unanswerable : " Out of 
nothing, nothing comes ; " " A cause must be equal to 
the effect produced from it ; " " A stream cannot rise 



122 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

higher than its source ; " these and many others too 
numerous to mention, all in the same strain and abso- 
lutely irrefutable, answer finally the assumption of the 
materialist, that matter produces mind. 

Nothing can be evolved which is not previously 
involved; involution is the key to evolution and the 
only intelligent and adequate explanation of its phe- 
nomena. We often have occasion to refer to what are 
commonly called the physical sciences ; we never speak 
disparagingly of them, but we insist that there are 
spiritual sciences which explain them and without a 
knowledge of which they are both misleading and 
inexplicable. Take phrenology and physiognomy as 
instances, it is beyond dispute that character can be 
read by the organs of the brain and also by facial 
expression. Even hand- writing portrays character, 
character is depicted moreover in every line of the 
hand and in every movement of the body ; but because 
we admit all this and do not refuse to be guided by 
these outward indices, if we have no better and more 
interior methods of judgment at our disposal, are we 
compelled to commit ourselves to the self-evident fal- 
lacy proposed by some, that the character is the result, 
the outcome, the effect of these externals ; are not 
these externals the results, the outcome, the effects of 
character? Outward experiences do not influence 
mind or limit intelligence, but mind and intelligence 
certainly do occasion and regulate all outward indica- 
tions. A thermometer has no effect upon temperature, 
it cannot heat or cool a room in which it hangs, but it 
certainly can indicate the temperature which it has no 
possible power to modulate. A barometer has not an 
iota of influence upon the weather, still the quicksilver 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 123 

in it can warn you of the rains, winds, or tempests it 
has no hand whatever in inducing or preventing ; we 
do not refuse to acknowledge the value and usefulness 
of these indicators because we are not foolish enough 
to believe them to be weather-makers ; just in this pro- 
portion do we acknowledge and utilize phrenology, 
physiognomy and kindred sciences. 

If a child is brought to us whose development is 
very meagre in certain respects, if the conformation of 
the head proves him to be very unevenly developed, we 
do not tell the parent that he is stamped for life with 
certain littlenesses and infirmities. Eather do we 
endeavor to spur on the parent to exert himself to the 
uttermost in overcoming these defects and annihilating 
these limitations. The brain has nothing to do with 
the intellect, any more than the barometer has to do 
with the weather ; it may indicate how far the intellect 
is expanded, but that is all. How often we observe 
coarse, brutal expressions marring the faces of unkind 
people ; a change of mind, or a change of heart as 
Christians often say, completely revolutionizes a per- 
son's appearance. Kind thoughts lead to genial smiles 
and pleasant lines in the face, while disagreeable 
thoughts, even when kept to one's self and never trans- 
lated into speech, pucker up the countenance and give 
it a sour and repellant aspect. Far too much stress is 
commonly laid upon externals ; the majority of man- 
kind are altogether too superficial and conventional ; 
formal etiquette receives far more attention than it 
deserves, and thus a whitewashing of sepulchres full of 
corruption within, and a cleansing of the outside of a 
cup and platter filthy within, is as much in vogue 
today as it probably was when condemnation of such 



124 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

hypocritical pretense found its way into the New 
Testament. 

Thought is not only a substance or reality ; it is a 
far greater reality, a far more important and influential 
substance than either word or action. Thus we need 
the Arabic as well as the Christian statement of the 
Golden Kule. Combine them and the rule is perfect : 
" Thou shalt feel and do towards thy neighbor as thou 
desirest thy neighbor to feel and do unto thee. ' If we 
recognize thought as more powerful than anything 
visible, audible, tangible, or otherwise perceptible to 
man's outward or bodily senses, we harmonize per- 
fectly with chemistry and other physical sciences in 
declaring the invisible to be vastly more potential than 
the visible. Chemistry positively demonstrates the 
invisible forces of nature to be far the more potent of 
the two. • No mechanical engineer needs to be told 
this truth ; he knows well enough the superiority of 
invisible steam to visible vapor. Every chemist knows 
of the superiority of ether to matter ; all matter can 
be converted into ether, but all ether cannot be con- 
verted into matter, for when the conversion is at- 
tempted a residuum always remains on the side of 
ether. Of course we may be found fault with for sug- 
gesting that ether and matter are distinct ; many 
scientists say ether is only refined, rarified, ethereal- 
ized matter. We maintain that that is a wrong state- 
ment of the case. The truer statement is that matter 
is a lower form of ether, as experiments go to prove 
that there is something in ether there is not in matter, 
while there is nothing in matter there is not in ether; 
ether may therefore be the parent cause of matter, but 
matter cannot be the parent cause of ether, as matter 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 



125 



cannot produce what is greater than itself, while ether 
.may produce what is less than itself. Consciousness is 
surely greater than unconsciousness. The conscious is 
surely greater than the unconscious. Thus matter may 
be a product of mind, but mind cannot be a product of 
matter. When organization is spoken of as necessary 
to mind, truth is inverted, turned topsy turvy. The 
fact of the case is the direct opposite of the statement. 
There can be no organization without mind ; mind is 
the organizer. It is the inevitable habit of mind to 
organize, therefore if it should be true that wherever 
mind is there is organization also, the organization or 
organism is not the creator of mind, but its creature, 
not its cause, but the effect of it. 

If you will follow this process of reasoning 
to its ultimate } T ou will quickly see where the 
fallacy of materialism lies, viz., in confounding 
cause and effect, reversing them, mistaking one 
for the other. Now to apply this reasoning to 
the curious and exciting phenomena under discus- 
sion, a pin or some larger object is hidden away 
somewhere out of sight of a " mind-reader ;" the mind- 
reader usually insists upon it that some one who knows 
where the object is hidden shall concentrate his mind 
upon it, and then either with or without physical 
contact with the person who knows where the 
article is concealed, the mind-reader finds it and pro- 
duces it, much to the amazement of the spectators, who 
greet his success with acclamation, without attempting 
to solve the mystery or tell how the thing is done. Mr. 
Bishop is a notorious example of a power lying dormant 
to a greater or lesser degree in every one, and he him- 
self admits it can be cultivated by those who pursue it 



126 LECTUEE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

with perseverance and assiduity. It of course involves 
an effort and exhausts the performer much as any other 
kind of work does which involves taxation of the men- 
tal energies. The experiments which have been con- 
ducted both publicly and privately in many places in 
the presence of many distinguished men of science and 
representative clergymen can only be explained in one 
of two ways; they maybe adduced as evidences of 
spirit control, or they may be brought forward simply 
as samples of the wonderful power resident in the hu- 
man mind while yet associated with an earthly body. 
We will take the latter view into consideration first, as 
it leads up to the former ; a due consideration of what 
is commonly called mental phenomena paves the way 
in the popular mind for what is always designated 
spiritual phenomena, for though the use of the words 
" mental" and " spiritual " in that connection and with 
such implied limitations may be open to criticism, we 
all know that such use of them is very common, and 
therefore needs to be taken into account in presenting 
an explanation to the general public. 

The mind of man here and now is assuredly the same 
typically that it will be after it has severed its connec- 
tion with flesh. Death cannot materially alter the 
condition of the mind ; it may liberate it and afford it 
wider scope than it previously had for the exercise 
of its powers, but substantially the condition of 
yourselves and your so-called departed friends is 
the same, with the single difference of outside organi- 
zation. Now if we are all spiritual beings here 
and now and forever, if we can generate and transmit 
thought by reason of our being spiritual entities, why 
can we not communicate with each other, and that 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. 127 

perfectly, without bringing into requisition the physi- 
cal senses at all \ 

Probably no one is entirely destitute of interesting 
psychic experiences ; it is really extraordinary to note 
Iioav many peculiar events have taken place within the 
knowledge of almost everybody, events which have 
been dismissed as inexplicable until the present deep and 
growing interest in the spiritual side of nature calls them 
up from the recesses of memory where they have long- 
lain stowed away, and offers a reasonable explanation 
of them in harmony with a hitherto unknown law. 
When you shall have accustomed yourselves to depend 
more on spiritual means of communion with each other 
and less on external avenues of intercourse, you will 
find yourselves receiving impressions conveying news 
of distant friends to such an extent as to enable you at 
length to dispense with outward means of converse 
almost entirely. 

No power unless specially sought after or unusually 
prominent makes itself manifest under ordinary circum- 
stances except in case of necessity. There is no reason 
whatever why people should not write with their left 
hand as easily as with their right, the only reason why 
they do not is because they have not been educated to 
do so, and have never felt the necessity of trying to 
accomplish what they have not been taught. But let 
an affliction deprive one of his right hand, the necessity 
of writing with the left frequently gives power to use 
it, or at all events it affords an incentive to an exercise 
which, if faithfully persevered in, is invariably crowned 
with success. Even the toes have been made to hold 
a pen where both hands have been lost, and the 
caligraphy of the toe- writer has been quite intelli- 



128 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

gible. Just as children have only been taught to use 
one hand and no toes in writing, and have, therefore, 
only developed the power of using one hand in pen- 
manship, so they have been taught to rely exclus- 
ively on their physical senses for all communion with 
one another, but let a sensitive, impressionable child 
be educated from the cradle to respond to thought 
without the use of language or anything outward, and 
that child will grow up a natural seer. Seership can 
be cultivated or repressed as well as any other power 
indigenous to the minds of the human family. When 
Mr. Bishop conducts his experiments he always tells 
some one who assists in the exhibition to keep his 
mind firmly fixed on the hidden object to the exclu- 
sion of all other thoughts for the time being ; he there- 
fore succeeds much better with one person than with 
another, though all who constitute a committee may 
be equally friendly and desirous of seeing the experi- 
ments a success ; still one has more concentrativeness 
than another, and the person who can rivet his atten- 
tion on one object to the exclusion of all others for the 
longest time and with the most fidelity is always the 
one whose mind the mind-reader can read most freely. 
We knew two ladies at one time, one an English- 
woman, the other a Spaniard ; the one could not speak 
or understand anything of the other's language, yet 
they conversed with each other in mind so perfectly 
that the one was a perfect companion to the other. 
We will give you two or three illustrations of the 
manner in which they communicated, as it was a 
singular and deeply interesting, also a most instructive, 
case to the student of psychism. We will say, before 
proceeding with the narrative, that the ladies con- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 129 

ceived a strong attachment for each other at the time 
of their first meeting, thereby manifesting an intense 
natural sympathy which always greatly facilitates 
thought transference. They were accidentally left 
alone together in a large London house late one 
evening in a thoroughly and exclusively English- 
speaking neighborhood, when the Spanish lady was 
suddenly taken with a fit of indisposition ; this greatly 
affrighted the English lady and also deeply discon- 
certed the Spaniard, but only for a moment, for no 
sooner did the sufferer express a wish for hot water 
than her English companion brought it to her; no 
sooner did she desire a window closed or opened than 
the English lady opened or closed it, of course at the 
time being acting automatically, scarcely knowing 
what she was about or why she acted as she did, as 
her companion's words conveyed to her no meaning 
whatever. Erom that day forward they were the 
most intimate and confidential of friends, and, though 
they had neither of them learned anything of any 
phase of mental or spiritual science from any book or 
person, they acted out a spiritual play perfect in all its 
parts. Of course, the question may be raised legiti- 
mately, how far was the English lady a medium ? how 
far was she influenced by spirit friends? but, without 
endeavoring to finally decide that point, let us look 
over the ground a little and see what warrant we have 
for indorsing such a conclusion. 

Clear proof of spirit intervention must necessarily 
transcend the abilities of those present in the flesh. 
We are not justified in recklessly attributing every- 
thing to departed spirits without adequate reason for 
belie vino; in their intervention. Over-credulitv anions 



130 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

Spiritualists does quite as much to retard an intelligent 
understanding of spiritual operations as does any 
amount of skepticism or even opposition on the part of 
those avowedly hostile to the theory of the Spiritualist. 
Whenever Ave have proof of spirit intervention we 
stand confronted with a fact not logically referable to 
the action of our own unassisted minds; for instance, 
if the lady whom we have brought forward as an 
example of the working of mental telegraphy, did 
nothing more than she was mentally requested to do 
by her Spanish friend, the Spanish lady stood in the 
position of spirit guide and the English lady served as 
her medium. If at other times their relation was re- 
versed, as it often was, the English lady was the 
directing intelligence and the Spanish lady the subject 
sensitive ; but if information was obtained foreign to 
the knowledge of either of the ladies, if either of them 
acted beyond her own and her companion's thought 
and knowledge, then we conclude there must have 
been a third party to the result and that party an 
unseen spirit. 

In frequent instances a mesmeric subject is taken 
entirely out of the hands of an operator and made to 
obey another will, there comes in the action of the un- 
seen spirit disconnected from the body; but even in 
such cases there is not always absolute proof that the 
influencing mind is not still on earth. Our theory, 
however, while it may at first sight appear to cut the 
ground from under Spiritualism, in reality makes it 
stronger, as our science is anthropological and we can- 
not study man as he is and where he is without gain- 
ing new light on his probable powers and conditions 
in another state of existence. We may say that we 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 131 

know that many of the instances recorded by the 
Theosophists are unquestionably genuine cases of 
thought transference, but they do not support an an- 
tagonism to Spiritualism when they are rightfully ex- 
plained, they rather cut the earth from under the op- 
position. If while here on earth, environed in matter, 
limited at every point by the senses, we can still exer- 
cise our spiritual powers to the extent of conversing 
with one another across miles of land and sea as well 
as when near each other in bodily presence, what must 
be the powers of those liberated minds who, no longer 
hedged in with mortal surroundings, no longer impeded 
with earthly exactions, can use their divine resources 
to an unlimited degree. Mrs. Eddy, in her celebrated 
book, " Science and Health," gives no adequate reason 
whatever for her militant attitude toward Spiritualism ; 
she says she knows spirits cannot communicate with 
their friends on earth, while she dilates at great length 
upon the power of one mind to affect another in this 
world mesmerically when not metaphysically. Mrs. 
Eddy's ven r argument in favor of spirit being the only 
reality, and the physical man virtually a nonentity, are 
just so many practical contradictions of the anti-spirit- 
ualistic statements she makes elsewhere. 

Many Mind Headers, Mental Healers and others 
seemed possessed with the delusion that a belief in 
spirit communion or a recognition of it as a fact must 
be given up if mind reading or metaphysics can be 
proved true, whereas the exact reverse is true, for all 
phases of mental and spiritual phenomena strengthen 
one another, and direct spirit communion entirely inde- 
pendent of physical accessions is only the apex and 
crown of all lesser demonstrations of what is in all in- 



132 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

stances virtually the same power. There are indeed 
diversities of gifts and operations, but the same spirit 
worketh all and in all ; the Spirit of God indeed is the 
primal fount of all intelligence, but the spirit of man 
also is the appointed medium of the Infinite. It is 
surely the will of God that we should help each other, 
gregarious instincts are evidences of the divine intent 
that we should perpetually serve one another ; in no 
other way than by mutual service can we rise to celes- 
tial altitudes ; thus, instead of ignoring the ministry of 
angels in our work, let us thankfully recognize it, but 
at the same time never fail to credit ourselves with 
what is duly ours, as no truth needs borrowed plumes 
or is ever enhanced by the addition of anything not 
strictly in accordance with veracity. Our practical ap- 
plication of these thoughts is this, we cannot always 
say to a fellow-being, give up such and such a habit ; 
our position in life, the circumstances in which we are 
placed often erect formidable, almost impassable bar- 
riers on the plane of mortal sense between us and 
those we most desire to reach and help, but no barrier 
of caste or prejudice can clip the eagle wings of 
thought, no law can forbid our thinking; where we 
cannot go in body there let us go in mind. If we can- 
not say drop that cigar, drink no more liquor, frequent 
no more that evil haunt, indulge no more in that vice, 
we can think our message, we can direct our thought 
earnestly, prayerfully, confidently; we can sow good 
seed in mind, we can give silent treatment where all 
outward attempts would be rebutted scornfully as un- 
warrantable interference. If we will recognize the 
power of thought more and rely on outward operations 
less, we shall be both surprised and delighted to find 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 133 

ourselves running a mental telegraph, not for the pur- 
pose of filling our pockets with golden ore through 
ministering to the love of the sensational and the curi- 
ous in the minds of those who are always searching for 
attractive novelties, but with the blessed intent of 
relieving, not primary and chiefly bodily suffering and 
sensuous distress, but the fruitful cause of it in depraved 
thoughts which lead inevitably to words of blasphemy 
and cruelty and acts of crime. 

In so doing, whether we know it or not, the hosts 
of heaven will work in union with us, and as we afford 
the only really necessary condition for true affiliation 
with pure and holy beings, our work will be one with 
that of angels and we shall in our turn become angels, 
ministering spirits, helpers of our brethren, whose sole 
delight and ambition is to consecrate our every power 
to the furtherance of the best interests of humanity. 



LECTURE VII. 



THE LAW OF LOVE. LOVE AS A HEALING AGENT, AND ITS 

APPLICATION TO SINNERS AND SUFFERERS ACCORDING TO 
THE METHODS OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE. 

IT has often been stated, as we think very falsely, that 
the law of love was first enunciated to the world 
by Jesus of Nazareth, whose name is always coupled 
by Christians of all denominations with every pure and 
ennobling precept found in history or romance. We 
hear constantly of Christian graces and virtues, as 
though there was no excellence in the.world before the 
Christian era, while the truth is that Jesus was simply 
the teacher of ethics and revelator of spiritual truth, 
to whom Christians have ascribed the origination of 
every beautiful maxim that he indorsed. 

The real Jesus was unquestionably a very different 
personage from the exacting and self-asserting God to 
whom Orthodox Christendom superstitiously and idol- 
atrously bends the adoring knee. Out of the only 
four gospels which are called canonical, only one, the 
fourth, even seemingly favors the deification of the 
Nazarene. Matthew, Mark and Luke present to us 
a very natural and intensely human character, in 
which the grace of humility is conspicuously present, 
while the Gnostic author of the fourth evangel mysti- 
fies readers by his blending of the personal Jesus with 

134 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 135 

the Logos of philosophy, which is nothing other than 
the divine wisdom in its life-giving operations, made 
mention of in the Book of Proverbs, where, in Chapter 
YIII, wisdom is personified, and made to speak as the 
divine maternity, who co-existed with the divine pater- 
nity from all eternity. " I was with him in the begin- 
ning," says Wisdom, when speaking through Solomon 
of her part in the formation of worlds. This divine 
wisdom in the divine nature forever exists and acts in 
perfect conjunction with divine love ; and when this 
love and wisdom are combined and operating in pre- 
cisely equal measure, then and there, and then and 
there only, can be found that perfect sum of all perfec- 
tions whose name is Eternal Justice. Justice is the 
true governor, savior and redeemer of the race, and 
justice is equally wise and loving. Justice is the per- 
fect sphere; love is one hemisphere, wisdom is the 
other. Love may be compared, for instance, to land, 
and wisdom to water. Could there be a perfect globe 
if there were water only, or only land upon its surface ? 
There was once a time, far back in the history of 
earth, when the waters covered all the land, and at 
their subsidence in sections of the globe dry land ap- 
peared. As the earth is surely and steadily advancing 
toward perfection, the land is gaining on the water; 
about two-thirds of the earth are now under water, and 
there must be a perfectly equal, divison of empire 
between these elements ere the earth attains the zenith 
of its perfection. The outer earth, as it becomes con- 
stantly more and more perfectly dual in the front it 
presents to space, registers outwardly in the equaliza- 
tion of its elements the unfoldment of the life of 
nature, which is dual in its essence, but not in its 



136 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

expressions, until such time as it has gained an equilib- 
rium in the realm of manifestation. ' 

This great and most important and essential truth 
was shadowed forth in monuments and Kabalistic 
writings long ago in Egypt and all over the Orient, 
and in various parts of the pre-historic world. The 
grim old Sphynx on the banks of the Nile, with 
woman's head and lion's body, propounding its ques- 
tion to every passer-by, is not a riddle to the student 
who is conversant with the hidden meaning of ancient 
imagery. The head of woman means the reign of love ; 
the lion's body means the subserviency and at the same 
time the cooperation and coordination of reason. Rea- 
son is wise but not loving when alone ; Jove is not wise 
when disassociated from reason. The perfect blending 
of reason and affection, or love and wisdom, produces 
justice, and to arrive at a perfect understanding and 
administration of justice is to solve the problem of all 
the ages, and make strife, discord, unhappiness, blood- 
shed and tyranny henceforth impossible. The reign of 
justice is the reign of the Prince of Peace, whose scep- 
tre is righteousness. Without equity, strict impartial- 
ity, there can be no safety and no freedom. Liberty 
can only dwell in safety beneath the roof of justice. 
The slightest deviation from the strictest rule of jus- 
tice is unkindness and unwisdom. To spare the rod 
is to spoil the child ; but to lash the child in anger is 
not to be just. 

Among the beautiful precepts laid down for the 
guidance of man, in Deuteronomy, we find many so 
essentially rational and so exquisitely humane, that it 
matters not who reads them with unprejudiced mind, 
he must agree to them. Take, for instance, the com- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 137 

mandments referring to the taking of a pledge, to the 
reaping of the fields, to the paying of all just debts. No 
one but a fool can dissent from the wisdom there 
enunciated. Modern critics may deny inspiration if 
they please ; they may treat dramatic and sensational 
stories of burning bushes, quaking mountains and mys- 
terious voices and thunders as old wives' fables, if they 
will, but surely he is utterly bereft of reason, of hu- 
manity, of the simplest sense of justice, who fails to 
recognize both the nobility and utility of the major 
portion of the Jewish law, which is not only a moral 
but a sanitary and hygienic law ; a law, moreover, 
which so well agrees with the necessities of human na- 
ture that multitudes are sick, suffering, dying today 
because they disregard it. 

Utilitarianism and expediency may altogether fail 
to see a truth in divine interpositions in human affairs, 
but let the utilitarian den}^ inspiration or revelation as 
he will, if he be but a student of human nature, as an 
anthropologist and advocate of pure ethics, he must 
perforce admit the divinity of the useful, the safe, the 
humane; in a word, of all that conduces to consolida- 
tion and to liberty. Liberty can never mean license. 
No one can ever be justly free to injure his brother in 
order to please himself. The interests of the race form 
a unit, and if one member of the race suffers all suffer ; 
if one is uplifted all derive a benefit. In purely private, 
personal matters people may have an unlimited right 
to please themselves, but whenever self -gratification 
produces a state of being which affects one's surround- 
ings, then that portion of society which is affected has 
a right to complain and interfere, and the constituted 
officers of any government are simply doing their duty 



138 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

when they step in to prevent all fanatical actions which 
imperil the safety of the commonwealth. 

We are not today dealing with a semi-civilized peo- 
ple, journeying through a desert, and therefore are not 
called upon to make our own in every minor detail the 
customs and observances of three thousand years ago ; 
we can only follow truly the leadership of truly great 
men when we emerge from bondage, cut loose from old 
limitations and strike out for ourselves in a new and 
broader pathway than the broadest in which our ances- 
tors could see to walk. The more liberal, radical and 
progressive you become, the more truly conservative of 
all that is truthful and ennobling you will become. 
Any child can pluck a flower to pieces, or destroy an 
exquisite vase which no money can replace ; the ability 
to break down is a power the iconoclast shares with 
every baby and idiot the world has ever produced. 
There is nothing sublime or instructive in making fun 
of other people, ridiculing them, deriding their belief 
and speaking contemptuously of their organizations. 
The true reformer builds far more than he pulls down ; 
he knows that if the soil be rank, and he uproot weeds 
ever so often, they will grow again ; he knows that 
there must be an improvement in the quality and con- 
dition of the soil, or no harvest of delicious fruit and 
nutritious grain will result from clearing earth. To 
improve the earth itself, to remove the means of groAvth 
from under the roots of weeds, to substitute a normal, 
healthy, vigorous constitution for an enfeebled one, to 
cast out the twin demons of vice and disease by intro- 
ducing into the system a powerful active force which 
makes for health and righteousness, may not be a sim- 
ple or an easy task ; it may need much labor, strength. 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 139 

patience and knowledge to perform it ; the new seeds 
may take a long time in sprouting, the new temple 
may take many years in building, but good must ulti- 
mately triumph over evil, love must eventually conquer 
hate, truth at length must vanquish error, even as the 
power of sunshine alone can dissipate the darkness of 
night and the mists of early morning. Of what use 
would it be to light the mists, or seek to drive them 
away unless something came with superior force ready 
to supplant them ; nothing, no matter how unlovely or 
obnoxious it may be, will go away to make room for 
nothing. If you have darkness and wish to get rid of 
it, you must introduce light ; and light being stronger 
than darkness, takes up the room the darkness formerly 
occupied. If you are stifling in a dense, oppressive at- 
mosphere, how do you get rid of it ? Surely, by admit- 
ting the fresh, pure air, which drives away the dense 
and obnoxious vapors from your room. 

The strong man of sin, error, death, darkness, igno- 
rance, misery or disease, will retain possession of all 
parts of the earth and man, until the stronger man of 
virtue, truth, life, light, knowledge, happiness and 
health, comes into the world and into man, to cast the 
evil genii out. Giant Despair will keep possession of 
his castle until an invader stronger than he comes to 
evict him; and were one giant turned out, and his 
castle demolished, others would soon arise, unless a new 
dynasty were established, and the land fell into the 
hands of other rulers and occupiers. 

In so far as the Mosaic laws are simply prohibitions, 
in so far as men are simply told what not to do, the 
Christian has right to claim superiority for the affirma- 
tive commands of Christ. But where the Christian griev- 



140 LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

ously errs is in his statement, oft reiterated in Orthodox 
pulpits and through the press by men who ought to be 
better informed concerning the contents of the Bible, 
certainly, as many of them have graduated from col- 
leges where it has been their daily study for years, that 
Christianity, or Christ, first brought before man's con- 
sideration the affirmatory command to love. All 
through the Old Testament, yea, and to be fair to 
other nations beside the Jewish, we are in honor bound 
to admit all through the sacred books of India, Persia, 
China, and many other lands, teachings identical with 
those of Jesus of Nazareth may be found. 

He whose boast it was that he fulfilled the law, he 
who never claimed it in his mission to discard it, has 
been grossly insulted, shamelessly misrepresented, cru- 
cified afresh and put to an open shame by those who 
have taken his name as the label for a system which has 
persistently dishonored him by lip-service coupled with 
alienation. The name of Jesus has been associated with 
absurdities and immoralities so detestable that it is 
hateful in the ears of many modern reformers who en- 
dorse almost the whole of his teaching. To bring 
Christians into oneness with their own historic Christ 
would indeed be to accomplish a miracle of reformation, 
and for endeavoring to do this, hundreds of liberal and 
conscientious ministers and laymen have been branded 
infidels, and refused admission even into the pulpits of 
the avowed liberal and progressive Unitarian as well as 
Trinitarian churches of Christendom. Theodore Par- 
ker's crime was his imitation of Christ. In his life he 
illustrated the great and glorious precepts laid down in 
the Gospels of all climes and centuries. He was a man 
who knew he would never feel happy in heaven while 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 141 

his brethren were suffering in hell. He was too broad, 
too lovable too loving himself, to worship a carica- 
ture of Diety which made Omnipotence a fiend, and 
substituted vengeance and tyranny for justice ; and be- 
cause of this, only two pulpits in Boston and its su- 
burbs were open to him, and prayer-meetings were the 
scenes of blasphemous petitions that his lips might be 
closed and he never allowed to return to his place in that 
city. Boston today reveres Theodore Parker as one of 
the greatest of its teachers. His name is now heralded 
forth from East to West, and far o'er the seas, as one 
of the noble army of prophets, martyrs and confessors 
who have died in harness, and even cut short their 
earthly career by their intense devotion to the cause of 
truth and human liberation ; while the churches that 
opposed him have either so far remodeled their theol- 
ogy that it almost resembles his, or have lived a cold, 
narrow, stinted life, regarding with chagrin the liberal- 
ization of thought around them, finding themselves 
growing Aveaker and smaller every year, until in the 
dim distance the} r see only annihilation staring them in 
the face, unless a miracle be worked to rekindle the 
dying embers of the old, awful faith in endless hell and 
relentless devils, which has now so nearly left all the 
cultured part of the earth that Calvin's and Edwards' 
theologies are little more than names for systems as 
practically defunct as the Ptolemaic theory of astron- 
omy. 

Religion, however, lives ; no foolish tirades on the 
foolishness of prayer can destroy the practical life-giving 
power it wields today ; no coupling of the terms relig- 
ion and folly in an announcement of a meeting in a 
public newspaper can destroy the power of true rehg- 



142 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

ion to reform, uplift, console and bless mankind. 
Religion is as far removed from the puerilities of a 
blind Materialism as it is from the narrow dogmatism 
of those who consider a band concert on a Sunday a 
nuisance which the strong arm of the law should sup- 
press. Infidelity is the natural outcome of supersti- 
tion. Idolatry and bigotry have made infidels, and all 
the folly we perceive in rampant atheism is to us trace- 
able to that unnatural, and certainly unbeautiful and 
ungodly slavishness, that blind devotion to a capricious 
letter, which makes the form of religion a matter of 
infinitely more concern than the power of godliness 
made manifest in whatsoever conduces most to the 
present and future welfare of the human race, individu- 
ally and collectively. An old proverb says that none 
are so blind as those who will not see, and it seems to 
us pretty often as though some persons will not make 
a distinction which can be made most easily by any 
person of even ordinary intelligence who reflects at all 
upon the subject, between the unchanging intention 
and the constantly fluctuating application of wise and 
humane law. 

Recently the- Sabbath question has been agitated 
afresh here and elsewhere, and though quite a number 
of very liberal sermons have been 'preached, and arti- 
cles written full of good sound sense, the voice of intol- 
erance, more adapted to the days of Cromwell or the 
Puritan forefathers than to the closing years of this 
nineteenth century has not been silent. No enlight- 
ened physiologist will deny that one day out of seven 
is needed by man and beast alike for rest and recrea- 
tion, and no one can fail to see physical, degeneration 
among all who neglect to conform to salutar}^ disci- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 143 

pline, and obey wise and loving laws formed for their 
guidance under the highest intelligence expressed on 
earth in this or a bygone age ; but the very words of 
the fourth commandment show how utterly irreconcila- 
ble is its spirit Avith the narrow prejudice and inter- 
ference with public liberty which often masquerade as 
concern for the religious welfare of the whole commu- 
nity. *If Saturday or Sunday is to be a day devoted 
entirely to religious observances of the puritanic type, 
no provision would have been made securing rest to 
the ox and the ass, as well as to son and daughter, man- 
servant, maid-servant and stranger. Oxen and asses 
have no souls which puritanism recognizes. They are 
under no obligation of serving God on one day of each 
week in any especial manner, but their bodies, yea, 
and their minds also, for animals have minds, and are 
capable of intellectual exertion, need rest on the Sab- 
bath as well as yourselves, and none of you are keep- 
ing holy the Sabbath day in the sense in which it needs 
to be kept holy, unless you so employ the day that 
Avhen you rise on the following morning you feel 
refreshed and strengthened for all the duties that lie 
before you through the week. 

We do not say that incessant attendance at balls 
and parties or constant frequenting of the theater is 
calculated to unfold the nature of man and qualif} r him 
for his daily work under ordinary circumstances. We 
do not believe that popular excursions on crowded 
boats or trains, where the day is often wearisomely 
spent in seeking pleasure and finding only fatigue, are 
adapted to the real needs of the populace, or that they 
tend in any considerable degree to point out the true 
and natural mode of Sabbath observance. We believe, 



144 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

morever, in the need of satisfying the spiritual or relig- 
ious side of nature, and regard that mind as dwarfed, 
and that life as crippled which has not fully unfolded 
the organs seated in the coronal region of the 
brain. The front brain and the top brain must be cul- 
tivated as well as the middle brain and the back brain ; 
and the great defect in the present system of education, 
despite its many advantages, is, that the moral and 
spiritual organs have too little attention paid to them. 
We hear a great deal about morality, but in practice it 
is often reduced to mere conventionality. A simple 
outward respectability, which is aped by many because 
it admits them into society into which they could not 
go if they did not bear a good moral reputation, is too 
much sought after, while character is too little esti- 
mated and far too little stress laid upon real worth. 

But, some will say, how utterly impossible it is for 
us to scrutinize each other's motives. How can we 
know when to excuse and when to condemn? The 
sermon on the Mount comes at once to the rescue and 
affords an answer to all such inquiries. Judge not. 
You cannot judge correctly oftentimes, and when you 
can you are not called upon to pass sentence upon an- 
other's life. Cast the beam out of thine own eye ; make 
thine own life pure, and then shalt thou see clearly to 
cast the mote out of thy brother's eye. But does not 
this look as though we ought to take action in con- 
demning others as soon as we are no longer flagrantly 
sinful ourselves? By no means; the conduct of Jesus 
with the woman taken in adultery forever decides the 
question of judgment for all true followers of the spirit 
of the Nazarene ; and that spirit which we are told 
animated his breast is the identical spirit whose pres- 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 145 

ence and constant activity made truly great all the 
really successful moral reformers the world has ever 
seen. To cast out the mote from your brother's eye 
after you have expelled the beam from your own, does 
not imply that a censorious, pharisaical or condemna- 
tory impulse should actuate you. 

How can you best reform another ? How can you 
best help a fallen brother or sister to sin no more? 
"Go and sin no more," if said earnestly and prac- 
tically, surely cannot mean simply that you utter a 
trite phrase and then dismiss a penitent without pro- 
viding him or her with the means of subsistence or 
opening the doors of any home or workshop where the 
once culprit may retrieve his forfeited honor by works 
of usefulness henceforth. It is plainly the duty of all 
interested in the welfare of society to set their faces 
like flints against every form of crime and immoral 
practice, by making it as difficult as possible for people 
to do wrong, and as easy as it can be made for them to 
do right, but this does not in any sense or way neces- 
sitate your speaking, acting or thinking unkindly to- 
ward any one. No matter how lowly fallen a human 
being may be, he is a child of the Great Universal 
Parent and a brother of yourself ; and as a brother it 
is for you, if you are wiser and stronger than he, to 
hedge in the road which is to him beset with so many 
difficulties and temptations. A weak and erring child 
should not be allowed full libert} r if he uses that liberty, 
or, rather, misuses it so that it degenerates into un- 
hallowed and dangerous license which imperils the 
safety of all around. Penalties must be administered ; 
houses of correction must exist; administrators of jus- 
tice must do their work until lawlessness is dead, and 



14:6 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

every one so acts that he is a comfort and blessing, not 
a shame or terror to his fellows. 

But we must learn to treat sin as an infirmity ; crime 
must be regarded as a disease, an infectious ailment, a 
contagious blight ; and hospitals be provided for crim- 
inals, as insane asj^ums are provided for those bereft 
of reason, and the best surgical and medical skill, ac- 
companied by the best of nursing, is provided for those 
who are bodily diseased or ailing, even though the suf- 
ferer should have brought his ailments upon himself by 
his own sins, follies and indiscretions. If you find a 
poor, broken-down wreck, humanity prompts you to 
take him in and do for him. No matter. though he has 
been a drunkard or a libertine, his case is urgent, his 
necessities pressing, and society is endangered if with 
an infectious malady he is allowed to roam at large ; 
so you have fever hospitals and cancer hospitals, and in- 
stitutions of every kind and name, for the cure of suf- 
ferers and as safeguards to society. 

Now as we do not deprecate the hospital, but 
regard it -as a necessity today, even though we may 
include it in a catalogue of necessary evils, we are ho 
opponents of a prison system, provided it be a humane 
and enlightened one, and widely different from that 
now in vogue both in America and abroad. No doubt 
American prisons are almost palaces in comparison 
with some Siberian dungeons; no doubt the govern- 
ments of Europe devise means of torture unheard of in 
the United States today, and you have much to con- 
gratulate yourselves upon in the humanity of your 
prison discipline compared with what it was a century 
ago, and what it still is in many parts of the world 
claiming to be civilized ; but revelations made not long 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 147 

since excuse the impetuous enthusiast for saying that 
all places where human beings are deprived of light 
and liberty are abominations. So they are in compar- 
ison with the institutions of a perfect world. 

Sewers and heaps of rubbish; dust and dirt and 
poisonous insects ; stagnant pools and slimy bogs are 
all abominations, and will eventually be swept away ; 
huge cities with their hundreds of tenement houses, 
where human beings are crowded together without 
sufficient air and comfort to properly expand any side 
of their being, are abominable, and will give place to 
widely different centres of industry and dwellings ere 
long. But reform cannot be fully accomplished all at 
once. All nature's processes are gradual ; it is ever 
here a little and there a little, line upon line and pre- 
cept upon precept, that truth and right gain the 
victory over falsehood and wrong. A celestial con- 
dition on earth is not possible until the whole human 
race has fully outgrown every thought of evil, and 
each unclean, unkind and unwise disposition. But 
progress can never be made unless continuous effort is 
made to progress. . Your best actions yesterday may 
be culpable mistakes today, because the discipline of 
yesterday should have prepared you to live a higher 
life today. So methods of correction, tolerable and 
possibly necessary in olden times to carry out the true 
spirit of legislation, may be iniquitous and utterly un- 
justifiable at present. There can be no excuse for 
punishment in any case until all mild measures have 
been tried and prove ineffectual. Then and only then 
are you morally justified in resorting to harsh treat- 
ment ; and when you are obliged to resort to asperity 
and coercion, you should blame yourselves fully as much 



148 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

as those to whom you have literally to administer the 
rod of correction ; for not only their obtuseness and 
incorrigibilitjr, but your own deficiency in the higher 
qualities of the spiritual nature, have compelled you to 
resort to a semi-brutal mode of correction. 

Some people are great advocates of the whipping- 
post, and of the gallows even ; they cannot understand 
any one being benefitted or societ} r being protected by 
mild and persuasive measures; they take delight in 
shaming and humiliating others, and even in taking 
awa} 7 life, as they say, for the good of the majority, 
whereas in a mode of castigation which only degrades 
the chastized one in the eyes of others, no appeal is 
generally made to the higher nature. We have known 
many brave, high-spirited boys who w T ould have been 
noble, courageous, generous and just, had they been 
properly trained, almost transformed into brutes by 
the absurd and inhuman floggings to which they have 
been needlessly subjected. No parent, teacher or 
guardian of the young, and no custodian of public 
morals, will ever succeed in doing real good to those 
under his charge, unless he inspires their confidence ; 
and when or how can brutality and fierce anger inspire 
confidence ? No one ever has a right to strike a blow 
in anger, and this has even been recognized to some 
extent among duelists, who have usually fixed the hour 
of meeting early in the morning, and under the most 
dispiriting circumstances. Before you strike a blow 
you should remain by yourself long enough to carefully 
analyze your grievance ; and when you rise the next 
morning to meet the one who has wronged you, the 
chances are that in nine cases out of ten you would 
feel it a degradation to yourself to deal the blow, as 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 1-19 

the offence does not merit so deadly a means of ex- 
piation. 

The law of love is based upon justice, and that 
strange command, strange at least in the ears of many, 
" Love your enemies," by no means implies that we are 
to associate on equally intimate terms with everybody, 
for natural preferences are not only legitimate, but 
positively of divine appointment. Neither does it 
signify that we should allow the burglar to escape only 
to commit depredations elsewhere, when he has been 
let off after having attempted theft, and possibly mur- 
der, on the premises of the man who has been weakly 
good-natured enough to throw him out upon society, 
chuckling over his easy escape from the clutches of the 
law. The law of love, however, enforces such action 
in all cases as will leave no reason for personal spite 
and angry retaliation. No law has ever been regarded 
as juster than that which ordains trial by jury, because 
twelve unprejudiced men are supposed to be found who 
have no personal feelings in the matter, and can feel 
no individual interest in the condemnation or acquittal 
of the prisoner at the bar, while the persons whom he 
has wronged directly can scarcely be expected to feel 
no resentment or bias against him. 

The law of love does not command us to wink at 
calumny, slander and detraction ; neither does it com- 
pel us to be silent in our defense when enemies are black- 
ening our names and spreading reports damaging to 
our standing and usefulness in society ; because, as no 
one can seek to injure another without really harming 
himself, and as no one can possibly indulge in habits of 
gossip without bringing himself into a state of mind in 
which he becomes the prey of evil-disposed men and 



150 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

spirits, there can be no fulfillment of the law of kind- 
ness in allowing another to persist in a course of action 
which, while injurious to ourselves, is doubly harmful 
to the one who is indulging in it. It becomes, there- 
fore, an imperative duty devolving upon the teacher of 
morals to show plainly the difference between an exhi- 
bition of hatred, revenge and spite, and a proper con- 
cern for the safety of society, by means of the just 
punishment of evil-doers. 

But here comes in the most important question of 
all: what kinds of punishment are really just, and 
what measures can be wisely and safely adopted to 
elevate the sinner and protect society ? In this con- 
nection allow us to express our unqualified disgust with 
the present system of prison discipline, both in America 
and elsewhere. Probably the prisons of America to- 
day are almost palaces compared with European dun- 
geons in the middle ages. Even Newgate in London 
was, in the time of Elizabeth Fry, a reeking cesspool of 
the vilest abominations, black as the hole of Calcutta, 
a disgrace to civilization, and a blot on the escutcheon 
of Christianity, which it will take centuries to efface. 
Bastard systems of religion which have been fathered 
upon primitive Christianity are, however, in no sense 
attributable to the spirit of Christian^ itself, as the 
horrors perpetrated avowedly in the honor of Allah 
are in no sense natural outgrowths of the religion of 
Islam. It is vain and foolish in the extreme for icon- 
oclasts, in their rabid onslaughts upon systems of re- 
ligion, to denounce the system for all the evils com- 
mitted in its name, or presumably in defense of its 
honor, or to extend its conquests. If allegiance to any 
particular form of religion ' made people necessarily 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 151 

good or bad, we should of course find good people all 
grouped together around one common standard of 
faith or profession, and evil-minded people gathered 
around an opposite centre. If Roman Catholicism or 
Church of Englandism made people of necessity 
bigoted and cruel, we should find bigotry and cruelty 
largely confined within the territory covered by those 
religious systems ; but though both Catholic and Prot- 
estant have burned heretics, and the fires and dun- 
geons of the inquisition have been apparently out- 
growths of an aggressive ecclesiastical hierarchy, we 
cannot shut our eyes to the treatment accorded to Soc- 
rates by the Athenians, nor to the diabolical fanaticism 
of the French Communists, nor the atrocities of the 
modern Russian Nihilists, while highway robbers and 
scoundrels of every name are, in many instances, utter 
unbelievers. Still Ave should be most unjust in father- 
ing upon modern skepticism, or an avowed system of 
intellectual infidelity, the crimes and misdemeanors 
of the present century. 

The truth is, neither sacraments nor ordinances, 
neither faith in dogmas nor belief in "nature," can 
change the stony heart to one of flesh, or hold in rein 
the turbulent passions of undeveloped humanity. Spir- 
itual growth, moral development alone can do this ; 
and so we find in the same church the saint and the sin- 
ner, the one loving, humane, generous, self denying, 
just, the other proud, hard, lascivious, dishonest, dan- 
gerous. Often such contrasts have been baptized at 
the same font and received the eucharist together at the 
steps of the same altar ; but the one receives from the 
sunshine what warms into life all that is beauteous, the 
other onlv an added incentive to evil. Religious cere- 



152 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

monies and beliefs make some people better and others 
worse. Even a knowledge of spiritual truth itself, if 
unaccompanied by heart devotion to goodness, will but 
give added power to men to work mischief. So in this 
day we see illustrated all around us the four kinds of 
magic admitted by Orientals. Some attain to the red 
magician's supernal power of subordinating flesh ut- 
terly to spirit, and, being infilled with divine life, find 
in every outward faculty and grace a means for pro- 
moting the highest welfare of mankind. Some, as 
white magicians, though not as yet fully and finally 
victorious over sense, are on the road to complete and 
ultimate conquest over pride, passion and infirmity ; 
and these employ every means of spiritual development 
as a stepping-stone to a higher life. Many there are 
who are quite contented with the gray magician's 
compound of good and evil ; an admixture of purity 
and foulness seems best to suit their taste, and, while 
they use some gifts aright, they befoul their lives by 
the misuse of some portion of their power. Others 
again, as black magicians, prostitute, desecrate every 
pure, holy and useful thing to purposes of wrong and 
for the advancement of criminally selfish or malicious 
ends. 

The same philosophy, the same science, the same 
outward knowledge, the same visible practices may 
lead these four classes of persons to such diametrically 
opposite results, and do we not see an analogy to all 
this in physical nature ? Behold the sunshine stream- 
ing down in golden beauty upon a rose-bush and a 
neighboring dunghill. That light and warmth which 
makes the roses blossom and causes them to emit so 
sweet a fragrance on the surrounding air, makes the 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. 153 

dunghill hot and putrid, sending forth a poisonous 
stench all around. Without the heat and light of the 
sun, neither the rose-bush nor the dunghill would have 
displayed its latent possibilities. Spiritual influx, the 
light of knowledge, the means for arriving at the high- 
est standard of moral excellence, by perverse and sel- 
fish persons can be so inverted that the very light is 
the cause of their deeds of darkness. See that the 
light within you be not darkness, or the greatness of 
that darkness will be such that, enveloping your soul 
in its plutonic shades, it will shut you out for ages from 
all sense of true happiness and all companionship with 
wisdom and its followers. 

We have introduced these observations neither dis 
cursively nor irrelevantly, as they were needed to rebut 
an unjust attack which is often made upon whole 
societies and classes of men by those who attribute to 
belief or opinion that which springs from indwelling 
pride, lust and selfishness. Change the opinions and 
faiths of the world a million times, and with all your 
success in helping men to arrive at correct views of 
truth intellectually, you will fail utterly in reforming 
society unless you reach their inner being, and cause 
the spiritual nature to break its bonds, free itself from 
its entangling chains, and stand erect and liberated in 
the glory of a royal independence which only those 
can know who are honest not because a penalty is 
attached to stealing ; who are pure not because exter- 
nal chastity may be advantageous in a worldly sense ; 
who keep all the commandments not because the law 
will punish those who break them; but because the 
ways of virtue, of true wisdom, have been found to be 
indeed ways of pleasantness and paths of peace, and 



15 4: LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

the spirit that has yielded to the charms of virtue can 
see no longer a beauty or delight in vice. 

We say, once for all, that in the dealing of Jesus 
with the woman taken in the act of adultery we have a 
setting forth of the highest of all examples of reforma- 
tion. She out of whom the Christ cast seven devils, 
tradition says, was Mary Magdalene, the penitent, the 
faithful follower, who counted no sacrifice too costly 
for him she loved, and who stood last by the cross and 
first at the sepulchre. These stories of the overcoming 
of evil with good are no mythologic fables, or if they 
be such in the eyes of any, then to those we would 
point out the hidden teachings of mythology, and un- 
veil the important truths the ancients hid in allegoric 
guise. " Go and sin no more," one short, simple sen- 
tence of only five words may do more today to render 
society safe, as well as to accomplish the restoration of 
the fallen, than all prisons and penitentiaries the world 
has ever seen. 

But of what avail are words without action ? Of 
what use is it to say to the hungry and the thirsty and 
the naked and the shivering, be warm and clothed and 
fed and thirst no more, when your coal-bins are full, 
your pantries crowded with food, your wells running 
over with water and your warehouses overstocked with 
apparel, if you hug these treasures to yourselves and 
do nothing to dispense them to the famishing? Of 
what use is it for you to pray verbally the pater noster, 
and then do nothing whatever to save others from 
temptation or deliver them from evil ? Good resolu- 
tions may pave the infernel realms if not carried into 
effect in life. Prayers can be but mockeries in the 
sight of heaven if the spirit of every prayer be not a 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 155 

desire to become yourselves instrumental in furnishing 
answers to the prayer you pray for others' welfare. 
The true life of a reformer is not one of indolent inac- 
tion, of prayer that is a substitute for work. His 
prayers are rather his soul's sincere desires, accom- 
panied by his life's most earnest efforts to call out all 
that is divine and true in his own and every human 
breast. 

In conclusion — and we must conclude this address, 
though we have but lightly touched the hem of our 
subject's garment — we would urge upon you to con- 
sider how more than necessary it is that you should let 
every weak and erring mortal know that you believe 
sincerely and devoutly in the latent goodness which 
smoulders within every life. ~No matter how depraved, 
let education, the unfoldment of the spiritual being, be 
your manifest object in every administration of 
reproof. We may safely have pictures, pianos, flowers 
and good living in our prisons, provided we teach every 
prisoner how to work, and see that he never eats the 
bread of idleness. The utter elimination of barbarity 
from modes of correction is the spiritual ideal, and as 
idleness is one of the most prolific parents of all evils, 
if we make our captives work for an honest living, and 
then reward them for their toil, we shall not only be 
rendering good for evil and overcoming evil with good 
in obedience to Gospel precepts, endorsed, by seer on 
earth and angel in heaven, but we shall be effectually 
protecting society by cutting off the supply of ma- 
rauders and disturbers of the peace, as, through our 
instrumentality, the once criminal becomes a useful 
being on the road to angelhood. 



LECTUKE VIII. 



SPIRITUAL SCIENCE AS RELATED TO MESMERISM AND MAG- 
NETISM. 

NUMEROUS are the enquiries from all points of 
the compass as to the attitude to be assumed on 
the part of Spiritual Scientists toward Mesmerism and 
Magnetism, especially as to the use to which these sys- 
tems are put in the relief of pain and alleged healing of 
the sick. To treat these systems fairly and intelli- 
gently it is necessary that we should know something 
of their origin and history ; we shall, therefore, occupy 
a short portion of the time alloted to this discourse in 
tracing the sources whence these systems spring, and 
then dilate upon the work which their supporters and 
exponents are actually performing. The word Mesmer- 
ism, you scarcely need to be told, is sectarian, i. e., the 
word is derived from the name of a man who was as 
much the founder of a sect as any man ever was. An- 
ton Mesmer stands in logical and historical relation to a 
system properly called Mesmerism, as Luther stands to 
Lutheranism, Calvin to Calvinism, the Wesleys to Wes- 
leyanism, Swedenborg to Swedenborgianism, Moham- 
med to Mohammedanism, and so on, ad libitum. Mes- 
mer himself was a medical student at Vienna, where 
he took the degree of doctor of medicine, in 1766. A 
few years later he began to study the curative powers 
of the magnet, and was led to adopt the opinion that 

156 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 157 

there exists a power similar to magnetism which exer- 
cises an extraordinary influence on the human body. 
This power he designated Animal Magnetism ; he soon 
began to publish accounts of his discoveries of the med- 
icinal value of this newly found therapeutic agent. 
Honors were conferred on him in Germany, where his 
researches were warmly endorsed by many persons of 
influence in scientific circles. In Paris he also attracted 
much attention. His system commended itself to many 
distinguished lights in the medical profession and to in- 
telligent and educated communities at large. He seems 
to have regarded his knowledge as a personal secret, as 
he refused a considerable sum of money which was of- 
fered him if he would reveal the secret ; his refusal to 
accept about four thousand dollars as an annual pen- 
sion for making the desired disclosure gave rise to sus- 
picions and provoked much antagonism, which led to 
the appointment of a commission by the government 
composed of plrysicians and naturalists to investigate 
his claims as thoroughly as possible ; as the report of 
the commission was unfavorable to Mesmer he soon 
began to lose his former popularity. Having fallen 
into disrepute he left France for England, where he 
made no great stir ; he then retired into complete ob- 
scurity. 

Such is in brief the history of the founder of the 
modern system called Mesmerism, or animal magnet- 
ism ; let us now look at the system itself, and turn our 
glance toward ,some of the other notable characters 
who figured prominently in its history at the close of 
the last and during the present century. 

Animal magnetism is alwa}^s closely associated in 
theory with a subtle mental force, a power of thought 



158 LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. 

or will which, emanating from one person can strange- 
ly affect others. The claim is not made by magnetists 
of the mesmeric school that bodily emanations suffice 
to induce the magnetic or mesmeric sleep, or the som- 
nambulic condition : on the contrary, all professors of 
the art or science claim that will is a powerful opera- 
tive agent ; thus mesmeric and magnetic treatments 
border upon mind cure, as they pre-suppose the exer- 
cise of a purely mental force in addition to all that pro- 
ceeds from body to body in the act of manipulation. 
The theory of animal magnetism is not by any means 
ridiculous, and it is vain for metaphysicians to argue 
there is no efficacy whatever in magnetic treatments ; 
simple animal magnetism exuding through the pores 
of the physical organism has properties and produces 
results on the plane of mortal sense, just as food nour- 
ishes the external body, and other outward agents play 
a part in sustaining the outward frame. 

Animal magnetism is largely animal heat ; heat is 
generated as we all know by friction ; thus the rapid 
and sometimes violent movements of magnetizers serve 
to evolve a vast amount of animal energy, which by 
means of the respiratory system can be easily commu- 
nicated from one body to another. A person taking a 
magnetic treatment believes and admits that somebody 
else's vitality enters his body through the pores ; he 
therefore acknowledges dependence upon the physical 
force generated in another system than his own. 

Mesmer supposed animal magnetism had some re- 
lation to the magnetism of the loadstone. The method 
of inducing the magnetic state employed by Mesmer 
involved the use of quite extensive apparatus ; iron 
rods, etc., were employed, but the more popular phase 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 159 

of treatment has always been the use of passes made 
by the hands of the magnetizer from the head of the 
subject or patient downward, sometimes to the feet ; in 
many instances, however, passes have been dispensed 
with and the subject has been commanded to fix his 
eyes upon the operator, under which circumstance some 
of the most remarkable psychological or biological re- 
sults have been obtained. When passing into the sleep, 
the subject usually feels a curious creeping sensation 
come over him, he seems to lose all power of voluntary 
thought or action, which sensation is occasioned by the 
will of the operator directing the patient's subjugated 
mind wheresoever he (the operator) desires. Various 
estimates are given by different authorities as to the 
average percentage of mesmeric sensitives in an aver- 
age community ; some fix the average at one in ten, 
others at one in seven, again others say that probably 
thirty-three and one-third per cent of the entire popu- 
lation are amenable to magnetic influence. It appears, 
however, on closer inspection that the average varies 
considerably in different countries ; climate, personal 
temperament, education, average of intelligence and 
many other causes too numerous to mention, tend to 
immeasurably modify the susceptibility of persons to 
the will of others, and while, as said before, simply 
animal emanations have an effect on the animal plane, 
no Mesmerist is simply a Magnetist of the physical 
order. 

Mesmer was no rubber of the illiterate type; he 
was a man of will, power, and decision, who when he 
set out to accomplish a result had great force of intel- 
lect and dominant purpose of mind to back him. Ac- 
cording to the Mesmeric theory the nervous energy of 



160 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

the operator has overpowered that of the subject, and 
while the word nervous may convey to some only a 
physical idea we think it would be difficult to find a 
sane individual anywhere who does not recognize to a 
greater or less degree the direct action of mind in all 
nervous conditions. Many of the best scientists, in- 
cluding members of the French government commis- 
sion appointed to investigate the source and secret of 
Mesmer's power, or at least the efficacy of the system 
he originated, have arrived at the conclusion that it is 
a delusion to attribute the power which entrances the 
human subject to an influence emanating from any 
physical object. The effects, whatever they are, said 
these men of science, must have their origin elsewhere. 
As early as 1785, when the report of the commission- 
ers was handed in (one of the commissioners was no 
less a man than Franklin, who was appointed by the 
king of France to investigate the subject), they had 
arrived at conclusions almost identical with those 
which find favor among mental scientists today, for 
though at that time the reflex action of the mind upon 
the body had not been studied as extensively as it has 
been since they pronounced the phenomena the result 
of imagination. 

The word " imagination " needs careful and elab- 
orate definition and explanation to render it a really 
appropriate one for use in such connection ; but 
understanding imagination to be simply an image 
or reflection produced upon the mind by some thought 
or object influencing it in ways not ordinarily under- 
stood, imagination is a good and expressive word. 
Imagination is a power, gift or faculty natural to 
man ; it needs proper cultivation, but should never be 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 161 

decried as useless or injurious, as it only becomes a 
snare when allowed to run riot, as all faculties do 
when not properly disciplined. In many instances per- 
sons have been most powerfully affected when nothing 
whatever was done to them, but when they thought 
something was being done; there is such a thing as 
self mesmerism, though what is usually called such is 
generally brought on in the first place by the operation 
of some outside influence. Among the early believers 
in the magnetic theory who had not extricated them- 
selves from the meshes of too much dependence on 
assistance derived from inanimate things was the justly 
celebrated Baron von Reichenbach, a German natural- 
ist, who in the earlier days of his manhood became 
involved in serious political struggles resulting in his 
imprisonment. On his release from prison he seems 
to have given up to a large extent his political am- 
bitions, and devoted himself almost entirely to the 
natural sciences and their application to industrial arts. 
He was a man of great force of character and power of 
mind, capable of engineering vast undertakings and 
managing large estates. He was, therefore, of that 
peculiar temperament of mind necessary to success in 
all enterprises where the subjection of one will to an- 
other is involved. He it was who thought while study- 
ing animal magnetism he had discovered a new force 
in nature. This force soon took the name of Odyle or 
Odylic force, to the operation of which many of you 
may remember the spiritual manifestations of thirty- 
five or forty years ago were attributed by many. This 
Odyle, sometimes called Od (supposed to mean all-per- 
vading), Reichenbach declared pervades all nature just 
as Vril does according to Bulwer Lytton. Vril in Lyt- 



1(52 LECTUJRE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

ton's mind was probabty a higher manifestation of the 
Od conceived of by Reichenbach ; it manifests itself, 
according to him, as a flickering flame or luminous 
appearance at the poles of magnets and crystals, and 
wherever chemical action is going on. This force was 
said to account for the luminous appearances sometimes 
seen at graves which have given rise to terrible frights 
and no end of weird superstitions. 

Od force is said to have, like magnetism, its positive 
and negative poles. The human body, according to 
this theory, is positive on the left side, and negative on 
the right. Eeichenbach claimed to have demonstrated 
as a positive fact in his own experience that sensitive 
people positively see the odic radiation like a luminous 
vapor in the dark, and can feel it by the touch like a 
breath. As the meeting of like odic poles causes an 
unpleasant sensation, while the pairing of opposite poles 
produces an agreeable result, a reason is assigned for 
those remarkable attractions and antipathies which can 
never be logically accounted for unless some such 
theory, or a still better and more explicit one, is given 
for their explanation. 

You have probably all come in contact with some 
of those apparently fastidious persons, whose extreme 
sensitiveness makes them keenly and often painfully 
alive to influences unfelt by the majority, at least to 
any appreciable degree. We often come across per- 
sons who say they cannot sleep in certain positions, and 
according to Reichenbach and his theory of Od there 
is a scientific ground for their peculiarity. Some sen- 
sitive persons declare they cannot sleep when in the 
northern hemisphere on their left side, because the 
north pole of the earth, which is od — negative, affects 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 163 

unpleasantly a person's right side which is also od — 
negative. 

As all motion generates Od, this force is said to 
account for many singular phenomena usually attrib- 
uted to a mysterious but unknown power, such as the 
use of a divining rod for the finding of water under 
the ground. Why, it is asked, may not a stream run- 
ning underground affect a sensitive water-finder so that 
the divining rod in his hand shall move without any 
conscious effort of will ? 

Reichenbach ascribes all mesmeric phenomena to 
the working of this Od, but not being a sensitive him- 
self, he never claimed to have had first-hand sensuous 
proof of its existence. His conclusions rest entirely 
upon the experiences of the many sensitives upon whom 
he operated and by means of whom he conducted his 
interesting experiments. 

Comparatively few scientific men of renown have 
given much credence to this theory in its physical 
aspects, and it appears to us the time has now come for 
a reconsideration of its claims, rather with a view to 
discovering a mental cause for mesmeric phenomena 
than with the hope of establishing a physical basis on 
which they may scientifically repose. 

Kindred phenomena to those attributed by Reich- 
enbach to Od have been explained by the light of 
what is termed Hypnotism by Dr. Braid, of Man- 
chester, England, who published some very interesting- 
papers on the subject in an English journal of Medical 
Science in 1853. The word hypnotism, as some of you 
are doubtless aware, is derived from the Greek hypnos, 
signifying sleep. The hypnotic state, according to Dr. 
Braid, proceeded rather from the physical and ps} r chical 



164 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

condition of the patient himself than from any outside 
influence. 

Directions given for inducing the hypnotic state 
which some persons have followed with considerable 
success are substantially as follows : Take a silver 
lancet-case or other bright object and hold it between 
the fingers of the left hand about a foot from the eyes 
of the person on whom you desire to experiment, in 
such a position above the forehead as to produce the 
greatest strain on the eyes compatible with a steady 
fixed stare at the bright object. The subject must be 
directed to rivet his mind on the object at which he is 
gazing. The symptoms are, first, a contraction of the 
pupils of the eye ; then they will dilate considerably ; 
then after they are widely dilated the operator should 
extend the first and second fingers of the left hand, 
keeping them slightly separated from the bright object, 
toward the subject's eyes. The eyelids wil] probably 
close with a vibratory motion. After ten or fifteen 
seconds have elapsed, the patient can be made to keep 
his arms or legs fixed in any position in which the 
operator places them. 

It will usually be observed that all the senses except 
sight become highly exalted ; the special senses are the 
first to exhibit this exaltation ; the muscular sense and 
sensibility to temperature become remarkably keen; 
but this exaltation of function is followed by depression 
or torpor, placing the body in a condition far below the 
state of natural sleep. Only when in that torpid con- 
dition is a person thoroughly hypnotized. 

This rigidity of the muscles and extreme torpidity 
of the nervous system can and ought to be instantly 
removed. An opposite condition can be induced by 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 165 

directing a current of air against those limbs or muscles 
the operator wishes to render limber, or against an 
organ he wishes to excite to action ; by mere repose 
the sensitive will return to his normal condition. If 
a current of air directed against the face is not enough 
to arouse the sleeper, pressure and friction should be 
applied to the eyelids and the arm or leg sharply 
struck with the palm of the operator's hand. Dr. 
Braid, after a careful analysis of a large number of ex- 
periments, came to the conclusion that by a continual 
fixation of the mental as well as of the bodily eye upon 
an object, with absolute repose of body and general 
quietude, a feeling of stupor supervenes which renders 
a subject liable to be affected in the manner recited 
above. Such experiments are found to succeed with 
blind persons, thereby proving the action of mental 
rather than visual action and concentration on the part 
of the one affected ; the effects then cannot be pro- 
duced through the agency of the optic nerve of the 
body, but must be rather due to impressions made upon 
the sentient, motor and sympathetic nerves, and 
above all upon the mind. 

Many surgical operations have been performed 
painlessly upon hypnotized patients, and hypnotism 
has frequently been employed with much success in 
various forms of disease, especially in cases where nerv- 
ous derangement was the explanation of the disorder 
concurred in by the faculty. Now that mind-reading 
and thought transference are agitating the popular 
mind so violently as to render mind-reading one of the 
most popular topics of the day, it behooves all students 
of Spiritual Science and all mental healers to address 
themselves to the task of finding the true explanation 



166 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

of these phenomena in mind, not in matter, and from 
what has been quoted and advanced in this discourse 
you will see that the general drift of thought in the 
scientific world even among physicians and physicists 
has been to refer mesmeric, magnetic, biologic, and 
hyponotic phenomena to a mental and not to a phys- 
ical cause. 

We will now proceed to state as tersely as possible 
wherein metaphysics must of necessity be far in ad- 
vance of mesmerism, animal magnetism, biology, hyp- 
notism and all other phases of semi-mental phenomena 
which favor the employment of physical assistance, 
and start with the assumption that one human will is 
stronger than another, and then proceed to argue and 
act as though it were a divine appointment that 
stronger wills should control the weaker. Up to a 
certain point these quasi-mental systems are pure and 
lawful, but in no case are they the equals of the true 
metaphysical system we endeavor to advocate and 
explain. Now what is the essential contrast between 
Metaphysics and Mesmerism? Surely in this all-im- 
portant fact that metaphysical treatment aims at lib- 
erating a patient's mind and will, and mesmerism aims 
at controlling or enthralling it. Disguise the fact as 
one may, mesmerism, according to its accepted ex- 
ponents, is a system of mental bondage, a system 
which boasts of the ability of one mind to hold another 
in subjection ; it is then a system which upholds mental 
slavery, and no slaveholding system can harmonize with 
the advanced views of liberty now everywhere pro- 
claimed as essential to the highest civilization. Given 
all the credit it can possibly merit, mesmeric methods 
are only suited to the infancy of human development ; 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 167 

as children are held in obedience to the minds of others 
until they are able to walk alone and act independently, 
so persons who are in an extremely weak and suffering 
condition and also powerfully influenced by other 
minds in error, whose influence over them retains them 
in sickness, may be reached beneficially at first by the 
mesmeric power of a really well-disposed, healthier and 
more enlightened person than those whose mental out- 
goings exercise so baneful an influence on the invalid. 
In such a case as this we may compare the mesmeric 
treatment to the transfer of a slave from a bad master 
to a good. 

In the days of negro slavery many of the negroes 
in the South fared so well with kind masters, they did 
not desire freedom. Many women today who have 
good husbands and happy homes, put the greatest 
obstacles in the way of the Woman Suffragists, by 
maintaining that women have all the rights they need 
to demand, citing themselves as examples of woman's 
happy lot, with which say they all women should be 
satisfied. No one denies that many negroes were well 
treated while yet they were slaves, and no one ques- 
tions the fact that many women without the ballot are 
in a comfortable condition, but in discussing the ques- 
tion of slavery and the question of suffrage, principle 
must be taken into consideration, not immediate com- 
fort or discomfort of certain individuals. Is the system 
right or wrong? not, are certain persons happy and 
contented under it ? is the question of the hour when- 
ever a reform is called for. In grave national contests 
the arena of battle is principle at stake ; under a des- 
potic sway people may live very happily and be very 
kindly treated, as they often are, by humane rulers. 



168 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

A sultan, a czar or emperor may be an excellent, truly 
kind-hearted and justice-loving man, during his reign 
all may go well and the people have no cause for com- 
plaint ; but rebellion against despotism in theory is im- 
peratively called for by reason of the fact that at any 
moment the removal of a single individual from office 
may deprive a whole nation of all their rights and lib- 
erties and land the entire population in the arms of 
cruelty and all its hideous results. ISTow the case of a 
mesmerized sensitive is about parallel with the case of 
a slave dependent on the good nature of his master, a 
woman dependent on the caprice of her husband and a 
nation dependent on the personal character of a solitary 
head ; at any moment the mesmeric influence may be 
withdrawn, at any moment the kind and wise mesmer- 
ist may remove his protecting arm; and as human 
nature is not yet infallible and unchangeable in all its 
operations on the external plane, a mesmerist formerly 
wise and kind, may, under the influence of some strong 
temptation or other powerful incentive, begin misusing 
his power so as to bring the sensitive under a most 
baneful sway. 

To be the creature of another's will is to be in 
slavery, and even though the will may be kindly and 
mercifully directed we should all strive to obey the 
command, " Thou shalt worship the Eternal thy God, 
and him only shalt thou serve," which translated into 
plain, everyday language practically means no more 
and no less than that we should under no circumstances 
allow ourselves to be blindly led by any kind of influ- 
ence, but in all our dealings with forces seen and 
unseen employ our conscience and our reason, and only 
yield to truth and goodness because our interior sense 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 169 

points out to us that what we are asked to obey is a 
divine monition. 

The writer of these pages has had personal experi- 
ence in mesmerism, so far enlightening him as to its 
nature and effects as to impel him, in duty to those 
who may not have had the same experience, to speak 
decidedly on this matter. The writer will now devote a 
brief space to personal illustrative reminiscence, by way 
of enforcing the lesson here intended to be conveyed. 
When about sixteen years of age, and at that time very 
impressible to all such influence as that commonly 
called mesmeric, he made the acquaintance of a young 
man whose mesmeric ability was unusually great and 
who exerted over him the most complete sovereignty 
for more than twenty-seven months. During that 
period a great number of deeply interesting and at the 
same time highly instructive experiments were tried, 
proving conclusively the absolute surrender of the sub- 
ject's to the operator's mind.. As the operator in this 
case did not abuse his power to any serious extent 
or in any important direction, no harm sprang from 
their association, but a sample of the experiments suc- 
cessfully conducted will convey to the mind of every 
reader a faint idea at least of the absolute sovereignty 
of the one mind over the other. 

In the year 1876, in a London drawing-room, in the 
presence of a numerous compan}^ of distinguished and 
influential ladies and gentlemen, including doctors, 
lawyers, clergymen and others high in their respective 
professions, the subject was engaged in close conversa- 
tion with one of the gentlemen, while the operator was 
taken by another into a room up-stairs and there shown 
some curious old prints at the bottom of a trunk ; he 



170 LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

took a definite and complete mental photograph of 
them and then willed the subject down-stairs to tell 
the assembled company what he (the operator) was 
looking at overhead. 

Instantly the subject commenced to describe the 
trunk, pictures, dates and other writing on them, the 
precise arrangement of a number of articles which had 
been removed from the trunk and lay in confusion on 
the floor, with all the exactitude of a closely observing 
eye-witness. Immediately the description had been 
given, most of the company hurried up-stairs, and 
there found everything precisely as the subject had 
described it. 

In many instances he would be made to do the 
most extraordinary things without rhyme or reason, 
and that so suddenly and impetuously as to cause the 
greatest wonder and merriment among all his compan- 
ions. Not only were similar phenomena of frequent 
occurrence, but so great was the influence upon him of 
this gentleman's mind that he liked everything and 
everybody his operator liked, and detested everything 
and everybody the operator disliked. He could, more- 
over, at any moment and at any distance from the 
operator be thrown into an unconscious state, and 
made to say and do whatever the operator desired. 

This is no singular or isolated instance; it is a 
common experience wherever mesmerism is practiced. 
If Professors Carpenter, Cadwell and others about 
whom we hear so much in New England, and whose 
exhibitions are truly marvelous, can so influence their 
subjects as to make them think ice is hot, and burning 
coals are cold, if they can give to lemonade the flavor 
of brandy, and cause tea or coffee to taste like whisky 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 171 

to the palate of the entranced or semi-entranced sensi- 
tives with whom they exhibit, and if this power is not 
confined to place or time, but can be exerted from any 
distance when once a subject is completely brought 
into subjection to the operator's will, in what danger 
are persons placed who yield blindly and unthinkingly 
to every influence which strives to excite or lull them 
to submission. 

Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of individual 
. mental liberty, and while we do not tell you to yield to 
no influence whatsoever and under no condition, we 
do tell you that state of mental passivity which 
makes you the mere creature of another's will is hazard- 
ous in the extreme, and ill befits any one who believes 
in human equality and in the right of individual human 
beings. 

Mesmerism can be used to allay pain and also to 
impart vitality. Yital force can be, and often is con- 
veyed from mind to mind while animal magnetism 
passes from body to body by the mesmeric process. 
But Spiritual Science, telling you to depend on God 
and draw your supplies of strength from universal 
mind, not from personal beings whose caprices may at 
any time land you in sickness, crime or disaster, urges 
you to so cultivate your own spiritual being that any- 
where, at any time you can obtain from the fount of 
all life the health and aid of which you stand in need. 

Mesmerism subjugates, it enforces submission, it 
controls ; while metaphysics teaches, argues with the 
patient, and instead of endeavoring to reduce him to 
the level of another's creature, brings him to see his 
own true position as a child of God and invites him to 
listen to the voice of God in his own soul, not recogniz- 



172 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

ing the intermediation of any priest or Mesmerist 
claiming authority to dominate the will of another 
being. In our next lecture, which will treat on Medi- 
umship, we shall pursue this subject into the arena of 
Spiritualism, to which Mesmerism always serves as a 
gateway and introduction. 



LECTUEE IX. 



METAPHYSICS AND ITS RELATION TO MEDIUMSHIP. 

IN our last address we spoke very pointedly on the 
subject of Mesmerism, or animal magnetism, and 
took decisive ground against that blind submission to 
another's will which is the leading element of success 
in mesmeric operation. Some persons, indeed many, 
seem to be so unhappily constituted as to be unable 
to steer clear of extremes ; either they must accept 
another mind as their superior and master, almost as 
their God, or else repudiate its influence altogether. 

Though metaphysics is old enough in India, and lies 
at the very foundation of the ancient Erahmanical 
religion, which is a purely, indeed an abstractly meta- 
physical system, in this country and in Europe, meta- 
physical ideas are so comparatively new to the mass of 
mankind at le'ast, that any amount of error and mis- 
conception prevails among the populace as to what is 
really taught by metaphysical science. Some meta- 
physicians, indeed many, claim that spiritualism is a 
gigantic delusion, and style all mediumship error of 
the mortal mind ; others again endeavor to unite the 
two, and in some instances manage to employ both 
most advantageously. The oft-repeated quotations, 
" You cannot mix oil and water," " there can be no 
fellowship between truth and error, light and darkness, 
Christ and Belial," do not apply in this connection, for 

173 



174 LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

mediumship rightly understood and intelligently 
employed is one of the greatest blessings which can 
possibly come to humanity. 

If we are to consider this subject fairly we must first 
define what we consider to be the true metaphysical 
view of death. Poets affirm " there is no death." At the 
Spiritualists' Camp Meeting in Oakland, California, 
where our teachings were received with so much kindly 
favor during June, 1886, these words were inscribed 
over the platform. Such an inscription of course 
excited much attention and provoked much comment ; 
people were for the most part familiar with the quota- 
tion ; it is to be found in Tennyson's " In Memoriam," 
in some poem of Longfellow's, and doubtless in the 
compositions of other poets also, but no matter how 
familiar the ear may be with certain words, no matter 
how often they may be heard in poetical readings or 
recitations, poetical license is always allowed for, and 
it is only when they come to be written up in plain 
blank prose as though they were as self-evident as the 
favorite motto, " Honesty is the best policy," and other 
equally sober and well-worn proverbs, that the public 
mind begins to challenge their truthfulness or really 
bestow much if any serious thought upon their import. 
Many Spiritualists and many who are not Spiritualists 
also take these familiar words and accept them as con- 
veying a great truth ; they find no fault with the 
phraseology and yet they make all kinds of fun and 
ridicule out of the assertion of metaphysicians, " There 
is no disease," a kindred statement ; if one can be sup- 
ported the other can, if one falls to the ground the 
other falls with it. Do those people who write over 
their platform, " There is no death," mean that there 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 175 

is no death in appearance ? certainly they teach noth- 
ing of the kind, but very wisely draw a distinction 
between appearance and reality ; while they affirm 
most positively there is no death, man never dies, they 
inter the body in the earth and acknowledge that it 
crumbles into dust, they are simply wise enough not to 
confound an appearance with a reality, they know 
the physical body is not man but only his fleeting gar- 
ment. 

When we affirm there is no disease we do not mean 
there is no appearance of disorder on the surface of the 
flesh, neither do we mean to deny that there may be 
disorders to clairvoyant vision in the interior of the 
physical frame, but we deny that man's body is him- 
self just as we deny that man's clothing is his body. 
Science denies sunrise and sunset, but all experience 
acknowledges the rising and setting of the sun every 
day as appearances, nevertheless sunrise and sunset are 
illusions ; the sun neither rises nor sets from the point of 
view of scientific vision, it only appears to ; from the 
standpoint of science there is no sunrise, there is no 
sunset. Just as science disposes of appearances and 
illusions by revealing facts and truths otherwise un- 
known, concerning the constitution of the external 
universe, so spiritual science, which is the highest 
degree of all science, makes known the truth of Spirit- 
ual being in direct contradiction of every mortal and 
erring belief and appearance. Death is an appearance, 
an illusion, a belief of mortal mind and nothing more, 
and judging from the testimony of Swedenborg as well 
as from that of any number of modern seers and 
mediums, man does not know he has died unless he has 
himself passed through the belief of death in his own 



176 LECTUKE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 

mortal mind. Swedenborg tells us he encountered 
spirits who had left their bodies fully fifty years and 
still did not know they were separated from them ; 
again and again are we told by persons who claim to 
be in daily communion with so-called departed spirits, 
that there are myriads of spirits who do not know they 
are out of their earthly bodies, they cannot realize 
death unless they pass through the belief of death, 
while they have died to the belief of their companions 
on earth who have laid away their bodies in the ground, 
satisfied their mortal minds and memories that such 
and such persons are dead and gone, therefore, they see 
and hear from them no more unless some extraordinary 
phenomena occur in their presence which lead them to 
create another belief stronger than the belief that they 
are dead ; this other belief, the belief in spirit return 
or in clairvoyant vision, is in such cases the stronger 
man turning out the strong ; a stronger belief always 
overcomes a weaker one, a belief in spirit communion 
or in clairvoyance often suffices to neutralize the effects 
of the previous belief that some friend is really dead, 
has actually perished, or else has gone far, far away to 
some mysterious bourne from which no traveler 
returns, and whither no message from earth can reach 
or from whence no answer can be returned even should 
the message reach its destination. 

Mortal belief establishes the idea of death, it then 
requires physical phenomena, test mediumship, clair- 
voyance, clairaudiance, etc, to break down this misbe- 
lief. The greater part of the work done by many 
Spiritualists and in many circles is an iconoclastic 
work, a work of pulling down, rooting up, image 
breaking, etc.; this work is in many instances positively 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 177 

necessary, and were it not done spiritual truth could 
not find an entrance to the mind of man on earth in its 
present average condition. Sites have to be cleared, 
rickety buildings must be torn down and carted away 
before new wholesome edifices can be erected on the 
land where once the shanties stood. The farmer 
knows well how necessary it is for some one to clear 
the ground of stones, kill the snakes and in various 
ways make ready for the sowing of the good seed which 
when planted in the cleared earth will in due time 
yield luxuriant harvests. 

We must not condemn, neither must we undervalue, 
the hard iconoclastic exertions of the sturdy pioneers, 
who during the past nearly forty years have stampeded 
through this country proclaiming that man lives after 
the death of the physical body, and that those yet in 
mortal form can hold communion with those who have 
laid aside the mortal tenement. Many of these rugged 
teachers who have dealt sledge-hammer blows at error, 
may, like Cromwell's soldiers, when they entered the 
English cathedrals and parish churches, have broken 
down much that was beautiful and much that later on 
will be restored, but if like an army pursuing in hot 
haste the foe, trampling down gardens and cornfields 
on their way to victory over tyranny, injustice and op- 
pression, these sturdy men and women, with little rev- 
erence for old beliefs, have overthrown some beautiful 
works of art in their endeavor to destroy only hideous 
idols, if they have sometimes been too reckless and 
have not fought with the most spiritual of weapons, 
we must remember that storms clear the air, and there 
is a perfect correspondence in the realm of mind to the 
facts of external nature, or rather, to state the idea the 



178 LECTURE Bi' W. J. COLVILLE. 

other way and more correctly, as the spiritual realm is 
the seat of cause, the physical universe being only the 
region of effects, there is a perfect reflex action in the 
external sphere corresponding to the events transpiring 
in the unseen realm of mind ; storms, hurricanes, earth- 
quakes, volcanic eruptions, in a word every physical 
disturbance encountered by man on earth, corresponds 
to and results- from some prior agitation in the kingdom 
of thought. We shall always observe, if we watch the 
signs of any times, that periods of great mental excite- 
ment and upheaval are marked physically as seasons of 
violent storms, and dread convulsions of external 
nature. It is now commonly admitted that the phys- 
ical atmosphere of this globe is very considerably 
affected by human conduct, it being an almost undis- 
puted fact that storms accompany and follow battles, 
and even large and brilliant pyrotechnic displays. If 
the inventions of man can create thunder and lightning 
and bring rain from the cloudsj then surely as these in- 
ventions proceed from mind and are carried out by 
means of mind, no one need doubt that mind unassisted 
or rather unhampered by material things, can and does 
produce the greatest conceivable modifications in ex- 
ternal temperature. The weather cannot be controlled 
by any one solitary mind, but when a concentrated 
mental effort is made, climate certainly is modified, 
storms are warded off, or rain is caused to descend. 

In praying for rain two difficulties have to be met. 
First, all persons are not agreed as to the weather they 
desire, thus their power of will or influence of thought 
discords, one mind helping to bring about what an- 
other assists in warding off, and secondly many per- 
sons who employ a form of words have no real faith in 



LECTTJEE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 179 

the efficacy of what they are doing. Union and faith 
are both necessary to a result ; where one is absent, 
and more still where both are absent, prayer and work 
are rendered ineffectual as means toward the accom- 
plishment, of any desired object. All miracles and 
wonderful occurrences which have taken place since the 
world began are just so many demonstrations of the 
power of mind over matter, nothing more or less. 
They are not, strictly speaking, supernatural, and they 
will not always be styled miracles, as miraculous cor- 
rectly speaking is wonderful, and things no longer 
inspire wonder when the law governing them is under- 
stood. 

Spiritual manifestations, and those in whose pres- 
ence and seemingly through whose instrumentality they 
were produced, were in olden days supposed to be the 
favored few, the specially chosen of heaven to demon- 
strate the being and will of Godfyo men on earth. To- 
day, as phenomena multiply and all sorts of trivial 
things are attributed to the action of " departed spirits," 
it becomes highly necessary for some one to so deal 
with the marvels of the present day, nineteenth century 
miracles as they are sometimes called, as to make of 
them a means for enforcing great universal truths not 
very well apprehended by the majority of those who 
pay to witness them and enthusiastically uphold them. 

Now once for all let it be stated that metaphysicians 
cannot afford to ignore or taboo spiritualism. It is for 
them to recognize its claims and throw light upon its 
phenomena; to attribute all phenomena to illusion or 
delusion will not do. It satisfies no profound thinker, 
and least of all will it weaken the hold Spiritualism has 
gained on the minds of the people. . 



180 LECTTJKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

We must all admit that, making all due allowance 
for imposture and exaggeration, alleged phenomena do 
occur, and these phenomena are indubitable demonstra- 
tions of the transcendent power of mind over matter in 
many instances. No matter what interpretations may 
be put upon old-time wonders ; no matter by what pro- 
cesses of subtle reasoning and the invalidation of history 
and testimony Rationalists may seek to explain away 
the miracles of the old and new testament and those of 
the ancient books of India, China, Persia, Egypt and 
other distant climes, these " miracles " are being dupli- 
cated in our midst today ; we see the cheap jugglery of 
the mendicant fakir of India imitated by many "medi- 
ums of the new dispensation," and however we may 
dislike so low a phase of mental action, it is vain and 
absurd to try and defend the hypothesis of fraud, which 
is no explanation whatever of either the oriental or the 
occidental medium's performances. 

We have, however, ample evidences of far higher 
manifestations of spirit power than those which can 
possibly come under the head of jugglery, even when 
the word is used as applicable to much that is really 
genuine in India, though on a low intellectual and 
moral plane. Unmistakable evidences of a higher order 
of intelligence accompanying the phenomena are multi- 
plying on every hand, and surely no one can read 
Crookes, Wallace, Zollner, and many another celebrated 
writer in defense of phenomenal Spiritualism without 
seeing that men of unquestioned scientific standing and 
ability are compelled to consider spiritualistic phe- 
nomena as worthy the closest scientific scrutiny and 
most persistent investigation. Professor Huxley and 
other learned men who have spoken derisively of Spirit- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 1S1 

ualism have by such actions done far more to demean 
themselves in the eyes of the fair-minded than they 
have injured the cause they have treated with disdain. 

No subject bordering on the question of human 
immortality can ever be regarded by the really serious 
and studious as other than of the deepest interest and 
utmost importance. All attempts therefore to belittle 
so grave a theme can only expose the shallow-mmded- 
ness of those who treat it with flippant contempt. Un- 
fortunately, many Spiritualists play into the hands of 
their detractors by approaching a subject of the most 
serious importance in a spirit of levity and idle curi- 
osity. From the traitors within the camp far more 
than from avowed enemies on the outside Spiritualism 
receives its deadliest attacks. But the movement itself 
is vital and prolific enough to successfully resist all 
opposition both from within and without, and though 
many Spiritualists are nervously afraid lest the enemy 
should prevail when the phenomena are submitted to 
the searching analysis of reason, such apprehensions 
must, in the nature of things, be groundless unless those 
who entertain them have secret doubts of their own as 
to the real genuineness of what before others they 
enthusiastically maintain. 

True metaphysicians, instead of denouncing Spirit- 
ualism and decrying mediumship, in order to be true 
to their own standards and to act in defense of their 
avowed principles, must be the interpreters and expo- 
nents of the truths of Spiritualism, though at all times 
and under all circumstances they must not be backward 
in exposing fallacies and correcting prevailing errors. 
To rightly understand the nature of men we must 
consider man not as a compound of matter and spirit, 



182 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

but as spirit only. We have bodies as we own cloth- 
ing and dwelling, but we are spirit. Man is altogether 
a spiritual being, and therefore the whole of man, not 
only a part of him, lives after the death of the body. 
The very first step in the direction of a right compre- 
hension of spiritual science is for the mind to arrive at 
a point in its perception of truth where it can intelli- 
gently asseverate its full conviction that man is only 
and altogether spirit ; man being entirely spiritual, not 
partly spiritual and partly material, it stands to reason 
that man's prerogatives and powers are not necessarily 
affected to any appreciable degree by his retaining or 
losing the outward structure called the body. If man 
is not wholly spiritual, if it takes spirit and matter, 
two opposite and distinct elements to make man, then 
throughout eternity you will all of you be something 
less than perfect human beings, unless you are re- 
embodied in a physical structure lasting eternally. 

No end of vagaries have arisen from a belief that 
the duality of human nature is a duality of spirit and 
matter, which it is not. The true duality of man is 
the duality of love and wisdom, of intellect and affec- 
tion, of man and woman, but the masculine and femi- 
nine principles which constitute the perfect dual are 
equally and immortally spiritual and spiritual only. 
It certainly seems high time, after nearly forty years 
of spiritualistic advocacy in this country, that Spirit- 
ualists at least should have long since abandoned the 
false beliefs which have led to a carnal doctrine of the 
resurrection of the physical body on a future day of 
judgment, a doctrine indeed which Spiritualists most 
emphatically deny, but one which they must neverthe- 
less ultimately accept if they share the radical error 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 183 

which originally gave birth to it, viz., a belief that 
man is a compound of mind and matter. 

Does it not appear evident to every one of you that 
if it takes mind and matter both to make man, that 
those who are minus matter, having left their material 
bodies in the ground, must either at some future time 
be rehabilitated in matter and have matter secured to 
them forever, or else be eternally minus something 
necessary to their completeness as human entities ? 

We know there are many of the school of Kardec 
who advocate what Kardec calls re-incarnation, and 
that the same doctrine in slightly altered form is now 
extensively advocated in Spiritualistic circles under the 
name of re-embodiment ; we know also that Theoso- 
phists, as a rule, accept this doctrine in yet another 
modification, but the tendency of all re-incarnationist 
teaching is to the effect that the wearing of a mortal 
body indicates a somewhat imperfect and unprogressed 
condition of the spirit. All desire to see the time 
when they will be embodied in mortal forms no longer, 
while all who are to any extent familiar with Buddhis- 
tic teachings know that the Buddhists make many 
sacrifices of earthly pleasure that they may shorten 
the term and lessen the number of their earthly em- 
bodiments. 

It will be seen then that not only is it not taught 
even by believers in the necessity of several successive 
earthly embodiments for the human spirit that the 
body is necessary to the existence of the spirit, but the 
case is put very much more strongly ; the only logical 
inference from such teaching being that whenever the 
spirit arrives at a condition of maturity or perfection 
it will have done with matter forever. The reverse 



184 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

doctrine, that matter is necessary to the perfect human 
being, is taught by orthodox Christians whose views 
on the resurrection and eternal duration of the physical 
body are borrowed from the crudest and most external 
views entertained long, long ago by the Egyptians, 
whose scriptures were evidently familiar to many of 
the Christian teachers of the first century. Paul in his 
epistle to the Corinthians had evidently been reading 
the Egyptian scriptures : he refers to them and not to 
the Hebrew writings, which contain no such doctrine, 
when he argues against the prevailing ideas concerning 
the resurrection entertained at Corinth in his day ; he 
accuses those of folly who entertain the materialistic 
fallacy he undertakes to answer and demolish, and 
while he teaches of a body which is indestructible, and 
incorruptible, he vehemently protests against the belief 
that the resurrection-body is the physical frame. 

Though a long chapter giving Paul's views on this 
subject in detail forms part of the burial service of the 
Episcopal church, that church, in common with the 
Roman and Greek Catholic churches and all orthodox 
Protestant sects, maintains the resurrection and death - 
lessness of the physical organism, and while no one can 
possibly reasonably accept such a dogma, it is accepted 
by ail strictly orthodox Christians as a matter of faith, 
tacitly though blindly assented to and usually included 
in a catalogue of insoluble mysteries, which on closer 
investigation can never be vindicated when judged at 
the bar of reasonable religion. 

The Christadelphians, Second Adventists and some 
other singular modern sects, have gone so far as to pro- 
claim the inseparability of consciousness from the 
physical frame. Man, say they, is his body and his 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 185 

body is himself. Man is mortal only according to their 
theory, he actually dies, he has no immortal soul, he 
goes down into the grave and knows not anything until 
the shrill blast of Gabriel's trumpet shall re-awaken him 
on the resurrection morn. 

This latest expression of folly is the ligitimate off- 
spring of a belief in the physical body of man as a nec- 
essary portion of himself. Endow matter with sensa- 
tion, let yourself believe that the physical body can feel 
and suffer, admit the theory of a sensorium in the 
physical brain, and it is only a step to the reductio ad 
ahsurdtim of the Christodelphians, for they, seeing the 
folly of believing that man is made up of two diamet- 
rically opposite elements, both of which are necessary 
to his real being, discard the idea of spirit altogether, 
and make the flesh everything. 

Again and again have we said to our students and 
audiences, " Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. 
Matter or Spirit, which ? Materialism or Spiritualism, 
which?" One or the other you may accept, but logic- 
ally you cannot accept them both. They are like two 
horses hitched together in a team, when the one horse 
insists upon pulling in an opposite direction to the 
other. A comic picture full of the keenest and wittiest 
satire, published some years ago, exactly illustrates the 
"matter and spirit " theorv of human nature advocated 
by so many. Two lawyers were pulling at a cow ; 
they seemed both about equally strong men. The one 
tugged vigorously at the cow's head and tried to pull 
her forward ; the other with equal force tugged at the 
tail with the intention of dragging her backwards. 
The result was, the animal remained stationary. 

Progress in thought is impossible, it is hopeless to 



186 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

arrive at any intelligent result in investigation, if we 
have one theory possessing our minds perpetually neu- 
tralizing the influence of an opposite ; as you lean more 
to spirit than to matter, so far you succeed in demon- 
strating truth, and in reaping such advantages as accrue 
from faith in truth ; but in so far as you lean to the 
idea of the reality of matter and regard your physical 
organism as a necessary part of yourself, the partner of 
your spiritual nature, as a kingdom divided against it- 
self is brought to desolation and no man can serve two 
masters, so you fail utterly in arriving at any logical 
result in your reasonings, and continue impotent to 
conquer the ravages of disease because your mind is 
held in the thraldom of mortal misbelief in which you 
are children of darkness and slaves of error, not know- 
ing the freedom of the spirit which alone is liberty. 

But it may be asked, if the physical bod}^ is not 
even a part of a real human being, what is it then ? is 
it a mere illusion of . mortal sense, having no kind of 
real existence whatsoever ? We know many metaph}^- 
sicians take that extreme ground, and sometimes appear 
to render their position defensible by elaborate argu- 
ments ; but for all practical purposes we do not need 
to go further than to deny to matter when organized 
into a physical body any more power than it possesses 
when in the form of an article of wearing apparal 
which we may wear and constantly be seen in, but 
which is in no sense a part of ourselves. A poet speaks 
the truth and nothing but the truth when he says of 
the discarded form lying on the bier about to be in- 
terred in the earth, " it was mine, it was not I." 

When we speak of mortal bodies in the possessive 
case we can recognize their existence in the same man- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 18 < 

ner as that in which we recognize the existence of our 
clothing, and you none of you believe there is any sen- 
sation in }^our coats and dresses. You can witness the 
destruction of your wearing apparel on your person 
and yet feel no pain ; the fabric cannot feel and you 
do not imagine that it can, but if the flame or rent 
passes from the clothing to the body, you then under 
ordinary circumstances, begin to suffer pain; meta- 
physics, however, takes you further than, the outward 
shell, and tells you you feel no pain in the physical 
structure any more than in the dress, but in your mor- 
tal mind which is reached through your body just as 
your body is reached through your dress. When anaes- 
thetics are given to dull pain, doses of mortal mind 
belief are administered, the mortal mind consciousness 
of the patient is benumbed ; if completely so, then 
there is no pain w r hatever during the performance of 
the most difficult surgical operation of the longest du- 
ration. If the mortal mind is only confused or par- 
tially stupefied then the patient suffers from experi- 
ences which may be likened to bad dreams and dis- 
tressing nightmare. When mesmeric treatment is 
given, if the operator be a person of intelligence and 
good-will, far less danger is incurred by the patient 
than by the use of ether, chloroform, nitrous oxide, 
gas, cocaine, or any of the other deadly drugs and 
gases usually resorted to by plrvsicians and dentists. 
When a very mecliumistic person comes under the in- 
fluence of a spirit friend who entrances him, and 
thereby removes his thought entirely from the outer 
plane of consciousness, the mesmeric method is still 
employed, only in such cases the operator has passed 
through the change called death. 



1S8 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

Dr. Baker Fahnestock in his work on Statuvolence, 
which is a species of self -mesmerism, relates many in- 
teresting anecdotes of persons who have thrown them- 
selves into what he calls the statuvolic condition, and 
while in that state have remained quite impervious to 
sensations conveyed from without. 

We do not wish in any degree to derogate from the 
purely metaphysical position we have taken in these 
lectures, and which we know is the only really logical 
and tenable one ; still there is such a thing as "render- 
ing to all their dues," " rendering to Caesar the things 
which are Caesar's," etc., and with a view to not neg- 
lecting this duty, we give all due credit to those lower 
agencies which, as secondary causes, necessarily oper- 
ate on their own plane with outward and visible results, 
sufficient to lead to the avowedly scientific theory that 
material remedies have a power and virtue resident in 
them, whereas Mesmerism alone is adequate to demon- 
strate that mortal mind operating upon simple matter 
can apotheosise it to such an extent as t<5 convert it 
into wine, beer, ardent spirit, tea, coffee, lemonade or 
anything else the operator may choose to will it to be- 
come to the perception of the sensitive who drinks it. 
Mesmerism deals in hallucinations, it purposely halluci- 
nates, and by so doing demonstrates what we are teach- 
ing, that mortal mind endows matter with such proper- 
ties as it may choose to impart to it. 

Man's creations are unreal, God being the only true 
Creator; the witness of mortal sense is incoherent, so 
that when a question is raised as to what are the prop- 
erties of a simple glass of water, one mesmerized sen- 
sitive describes brandy, another lager beer, another 
whiskey, another coffee ; to the audience, which is 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 189 

usually in a state of the utmost hilarity, all the sub- 
jects on the stage are acting most comically and un- 
reasonably ; the professor makes his living by repeat- 
ing these experiments night after night before crowds 
of excited, often enthusiastic spectators ; but what is 
the outcome of it all? Has the simple fact that mor- 
tal mind endows matter with such attributes as it 
evolves from itself been utilized as a rule among mes- 
merists and their followers in the elucidation of the 
greatest problem of the ages ? Here and there there 
have been and there still are men who devote themselves 
to the practical and humanitarian work of making 
such experiments serve to teach the community many 
a useful lesson, but who can deny that in the majority 
of instances curiosity, sight-seeing, love of sensation 
and mystery constitute the stock in trade of those who 
throng the halls where mesmeric entertainments are 
given ? Now how is it with Spiritualists and mediums ? 
Is there on the whole a much higher tone in the spirit- 
ualistic than in the mesmeric community ? Are spirit- 
ualist meetings and seances at large devoted to much 
more than the gratification of curiosity ? If we utter 
something of a Jeremiad against the present wide- 
spread apathy among Spiritualists toward the higher 
phases of Spiritualism and the almost insane demand 
for tests everywhere, we shall only be echoing the 
voice of the spiritualistic press all over the country and 
abroad. 

Take Boston as an example ; Eoston has long been 
celebrated as spiritualistic headquarters, the Banner of 
Light, the oldest newspaper in the world devoted to 
the advocacy- of modern Spiritualism, has floated on 
the Boston breeze for many and many a year ; public 



190 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

meetings and private seances have been held continu- 
ously with many fluctuations in their number and im- 
portance for a period of well nigh forty years, and yet 
today a large percentage of the oldest spiritualists 
are crying as with the voice of the horse-leech, give us 
more, more. More what ? science ? philosophy 7 ? No, 
alas ! no, tests. The same old, old tests over and over 
again, without even a break in their monotony; the 
same faces may be seen year in and year out at meet- 
ings and seances, demanding these everlasting tests 
which must long since have lost the least approach to 
novelties. This insatiable greed for tests is as bad as 
any other depraved appetite, it is like a taste for liquor, 
opium or tobacco, it grows upon the persons who in- 
dulge -in it, and what under heaven can be more farci- 
cal than to see a company of people, many of them 
gray-haired grandsires and grandmothers, demanding 
the same old tests of every old and new medium, and 
then shrieking themselves hoarse whenever they plati- 
tudinize on "progress" and "advance." Such is of 
course not a faithful portrait of all Spiritualists by any 
means, but unfortunately it does no injustice to a 
numerically powerful section of them. 

Now what influence do such people exert on medi- 
ums? How far do they influence the communica- 
tions? We reply unhesitatingly that in the case of 
susceptible and partially developed sensitives it reacts 
upon their mental sphere like a fog to obscure the sun- 
light, it rears impassable barriers between them and 
the higher spheres of intelligence, it checks their aspira- 
tions and keeps them perpetually on the lowest round 
of the ladder of intellectual and spiritual culture. 
Mediums are constantly blamed for the delinquencies 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 191 

of their clients ; their over susceptibility is the cause of 
their reflecting to the extent thev do the desires of 
those around them, and so depressing is this incessant 
demand for the most inferior kind of tests that many 
a medium confines himself or herself to this incessant 
ministration to the lowest condition of mortal mind 
curiosity, for the sake of a living for self and family. 
Demand regulates supply in every market ; if articles 
are never called for tradespeople soon cease to keep 
them, but let an article be asked for with any degree 
of persistency and it is soon procurable almost every- 
where. 

We must in every particular strive to conform our- 
selves to the truth embodied in those often quoted 
words, "Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, 
knock and it shall be opened, for every one who 
asketh receiveth, he that seeketh findeth, and to 
him that knocketh it shall be opened." The paltry 
twaddle and the hateful recrimination continually 
passing from lip to lip, against mediums and me- 
diumship, the sanctimonious attitude of the " unco 
guid," who stand aside with an air of " I am holier 
than thou," can no more raise the tone of mediumship 
and stem the torrent of misleading information con- 
veyed through mediumistic channels, than streets can 
be cleaned by people exaggerating their foul condition, 
but never raising a hand or taking a single step in the 
direction of cleanliness. To remove evils, not to be- 
moan them, is the work of the true reformer ; to stand 
still and rail at evils while all the while you accept 
them as inevitable, is the worst kind of folly ; when we 
see an error we must set to work to overcome it. 
M You must take people as you find them," "You must 



192 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

make the best of things as they are," and similar 
speeches so constantly heard are the most effectual 
barriers imaginable to true progress, and here we come 
to a point in our address where we must explain the 
difference between clairvoyant and intuitive diagnosis 
and prophecy. 

Ordinary clairvoyance, which is rarely genuine 
clairvoyance (clear-seeing) at all, looks at disease, evil, 
misery, and after describing the condition of a patient 
at the time of examination as pitiable in the extreme, 
sometimes goes on to depict future hopelessness. Such 
delineations are vile and false in the extreme they are 
worse than useless ; not only do they do no good, they 
lead to the most distressing results, as they fill the 
patient and his nearest friends with the gloomiest fore- 
bodings of impending disaster, thereby robbing the 
patient and his attendants and sympathizers of the 
bright rays of hope they might bask in, were it not for 
the influence exerted upon their minds by the prophetic 
utterances of one who by reason of some singular gift 
of thought-reading has impressed them as an almost 
infallible discerner of their actual condition and des- 
tiny. Astrology, clairvoyance and a whole batch of 
kindred mixtures of truth and error, science and super- 
stition, need considerable revision, expurgation and 
elucidation before they can be of much real service and 
do no harm to communities at large. "A little learn- 
ing is a dangerous thing," "A little knowledge in- 
clineth man to atheism," no wiser sentences than these 
culled from the poet Pope and the philosopher Bacon, 
have ever fallen from human lips, but we know how 
studiously both those geniuses pursued the fair goddess 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLYILLE. 193 

Knowledge into her secret hiding-place that they might 
wrest from her her most hidden secrets. 

A superficial smattering of information on occult 
subjects is often dangerous and misleading ; the student 
of the occult needs a well-disciplined mind and must be 
prepared to make some hard and consecutive effort to 
reach the deep still waters of safety beneath the rush- 
ing, treacherous breakers on the shore. An astrologer 
in Boston handed out some horoscopes the other day 
with this inscription : " The wise man rules his stars, 
the fool obeys them," and this audacious acknowledge- 
ment of human free agency he declared harmonized 
perfectly with the conclusions of the best astrologers 
of ancient time. If this be so, then astrology is no 
more objectionable and quite as serviceable as meteor- 
ology. If clairvoyants can take the stand and proclaim 
the wise man conquers fate, the foolish submit to it, 
clairvoyance may be utilized as a means for the pre- 
vention of catastrophes instead of, as it is too often, 
alas, misused as a means of fixing error ineradicably in 
the human mind. Clairvoyant delineations of disease 
may be and often are superficially true, but in many 
instances they are not even that ; often a reputed clair- 
voyant becomes morbidly sensitive to the latent fears 
of a patient and to the fears of those w r ho fear for him 
also, and in an abnormal condition proceeds to locate 
imaginar} r diseases in all parts of the body. The dan- 
ger you incur if you permit such diagnosis to affect 
your belief, is that nervous affections, notably hysteria, 
which is the most extreme form of nervous excitement, 
in many instances lead to the creation and external 
manifestation of the very disorders which a person 
dreads and believes he alreadv has or soon will have. 



104 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

To see an evil is not necessarily to be able to cure 
it ; genuine clairvoyance, or rather intuitive perception, 
finds the cause of the evil, discovers why you have 
anything the matter with you at all, and by ferreting 
out the primal cause of your being in any way disor- 
dered or diseased, sets to work to overcome the effect 
flowing from the first cause of the malady by meeting 
that cause courageously and helping you to vanquish 
its hold upon your mind. Jesus, we are told in his 
conversation with the woman of Samaria at Jacob's 
well, exercised what might now be called clairvoyance ; 
he read her past life and told her all about her marital 
relations, past and present, but instead of giving her to 
understand that she must always remain burdened by 
her misdeeds and the consequences of them, he used 
his gift of seership only as a prelude to a glorious ora- 
tion on the all-potency of the living water which every 
human spirit can find within itself, the panacea for 
every ill, the right divine which conquers every wrong. 

Many mediumistic persons are really influenced by 
minds who have not yet outgrown their earthly errors ; 
they are therefore led to prescribe the same abomina- 
ble medicines they used on earth, and to predict the 
doom of patients after the method of ignorant medical 
prognosis. All such proffered information and advice 
should be attributed to the source whence it really 
emanates, viz, mortal mind in error, and as the dissolu- 
tion of the outward frame does not guarantee such 
spiritual illumination as will enable one to become 
immediately infallible, as earthly errors are often 
slowly laid aside one by one, we must assume precisely 
the same attitude to " spirits " as to " mortals," know- 
ing that error will continue to manifest until overcome 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 195 

by spiritual growth, not by the dropping of the mortal 
robe of flesh which no more changes the condition of 
the spirit than the dress changes that of the body. 
Let mediumistic powers be estimated at their true 
worth, cultivated and utilized accordingly ; but a blind 
idolatry which has for its watchword " Thus saith the 
spirits," is a return to the errors of barbaric ages, and 
accords only with a slavish subjection of one's own 
mentality diametrically opposed to every enlightened 
conception of individual liberty. 



LECTIJEE X. 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDENTS COMMENCING PRAC- 
TICE. 

THE preceding nine lectures in this course, as you 
must all have observed, have been devoted largely 
to laying a foundation on which to build a consistent 
method of practice in accordance with such new light 
as the world is now receiving on the science of life 
immortal. It is said of Jesus that his mission to the 
world was to bring life and immortality to light, in 
other words, to reveal to man the nature of his own 
being, to help the human race to discover and to rec- 
ognize its own latent possibilities. 

The new birth so constantly preached upon from 
Christian pulpits is nothing other in its esoteric sense 
than the unfolding of man's spiritual nature so that he 
discovers what he really is. " Man, know thyself," the 
celebrated motto written over the great Athenian 
Academy of old, is the command of Spiritual Science 
to all the world today. " The proper study of man- 
kind is man," does not surely mean that anthropology 
must be confined to the study of man's outermost vest- 
ure, the mere shell which for a brief span apparently 
encircles and encloses the kernel of immortal man. 
Spiritual Science, or Theosophy, is, properly speaking, 
comprehensive anthropology, and it is at the same 
time pure theology, for theology is as much a science as 

196 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 197 

geology ; but as we do not look down into the earth to 
find the stars, neither do we gaze toward the heavens 
to discover fossils, so we cannot investigate spiritual 
truths by means of simply physical research. 

With what exists on the plane of mortal sense, and 
with all the bewildering and utterly discordant beliefs 
of mortal mind spiritual truth has no other dealing than 
the sun has with darkness, mist and fog, truth drives 
away error as light banishes darkness. What is error? 
what is darkness? nothing, a simple negation. It 
is, therefore, incontestable logic to affirm there is no 
disease as there is no darkness, which means that dis- 
ease and darkness are both on a level, they are nothing, 
they are simple negations of the intellect, and as nega- 
tions only must they be fought and overcome. Dark- 
ness occasions fear, it engenders every form of horrible 
dread ; weird and awful superstitions are born and 
cradled in ignorance which is spiritual and mental 
darkness ; dispel the illusion produced by ignorance or 
darkness and fear flies away with the approach of 
dawn. The first step for the healer to take is to affirm 
the nothingness of error ; you must in your practice 
make it nothing to your own mind and nothing to 
your patient's thought also, for as long as either of 
you regard it as something you will fear it, and fearing 
it, it Avill have power over you as it will receive power 
from above, i. <?., from your mind endowing it with the 
semblance of reality. 

Some practitioners fail to demonstrate truth in 
many instances because of their failure to comprehend 
the true principles of the science of which' they are the 
professed exponents. Take the case of many well- 
meaning but poorly-informed aspirants to metaphysi- 



198 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

cal knowledge ; they evidently have no clear idea in 
their own minds, and therefore cannot impart any 
clear thought to their patients when they employ cer- 
tain formulas which they suppose are endowed with 
some talismanic value ; such Kabalistic incantations 
often mystify and mislead, as they savor far more of 
blind mysticism than of intelligent appreciation of 
truth. You have no cancer, no tumor, no fever, etc., 
etc., conveys to many a mind no truth whatever, but 
rather it instils error and fails to break the hold of 
mortal mischief upon the patient's mind, as the patient 
hearing such an utterance or receiving such an impres- 
sion mentally, while understanding nothing of spiritual 
science, reasons thus with himself : Some people are 
afflicted thus with disorders it is true, but I am happily 
not one of that number. I have been misled by false 
diagnosis into a belief that I have a disease with which 
some of my fellow beings are afflicted but from which 
I am free. Such a conclusion is false in many cases, as 
the process of reasoning which leads to such a conclu- 
sion is utterly erroneous ; that person has that disease 
whatever it may be, as much as it is possible for any 
one to have it. There has been no mistake whatever in 
diagnosis, the diagnosis has been absolutely correct on 
the plane of mortal sense ; the condition and appear- 
ance of the flesh is just as the doctor stated, and it is 
not any part of the work of a metaphysician to deny 
that there is such an appearance in the flesh as the one 
indicated. The metaphysician must turn from flesh to 
spirit, transfer the glance of his mind from mortal 
error to immortal truth, look away from the outward 
garment, tattered and disfigured as it may be, to the 
perfect spiritual form in health and harmony. You 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 199 

may be ill in body, you may suffer in mortal mind, but 
what matters it if you do ? you must look away from 
sense to spirit and start right in your treatment or you 
can never hope to arrive at satisfactory results. Bad 
beginnings can never lead to good endings, for as 
surely as the flower and fruit will correspond in type 
and species to the nature of the sown seed from which 
it has sprung, so certainly will dire results of harm and 
failure follow upon all attempts at treating mentally, 
starting from false premises. 

Every practitioner should regard himself or herself 
as a teacher rather than as a healer in the ordinary 
sense, for as spiritual science recognizes neither mag- 
netism, Mesmerism nor any external force or aid what- 
soever in method of treatment, the spiritual doctor 
(Latin equivalent of teacher) must never undertake to 
tolerate the assumption that he is to heal another by 
virtue of imparting his life-essence into another frame ; 
vampirism is possible but detestable, and must be 
sternly discountenanced in all its phases. Likewise we 
must boldly denounce the hateful and obnoxious error 
that supposes it neccessary for a healer to take on a pa- 
tient's disease in the process of removing such disorder. 
You surely do not consider it necessary to take on peo- 
ple's immoralities in order to cure them of theft, lying, 
or impurity ; you cannot cleanse the moral atmosphere 
around you by becoming befouled by its corruptions, 
neither can you help to raise the sick to health any 
more than you can raise the fallen to virtue by de- 
scending onto the plane of error and becoming your- 
self a victim of disease. 

We will here introduce a few remarks upon some 
of the most salient difficulties with which young stu- 
40 



200 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

dents have usually to contend. The first great obstacle 
in the way of accomplishing the healing of a patient is 
your own as well as other's belief in hereditary sin or 
transmitted disease. Now how are Ave to meet and 
vanquish the prevailing belief in heredity, apparently 
so well grounded in exact knowledge. The sins of the 
parents, we are told, are visited upon the children unto 
the third and fourth generations: daily experiences 
seem to prove the truth of these declarations of the 
Jewish scriptures. Adam's sin transmitted, even if 
not imputed, is said to be the fruitful source of human 
suffering, and in some form or other hereditary vice 
and suffering are acknowledged by all classes of 
thinkers. We freely admit the truth of the theory of 
heredity up to a certain point, but under no circum- 
stances do we deem it advisable to dwell upon trans- 
mitted evil and let our belief in it tie our hands and 
cripple our confidence when we can all go back to the 
sublime opening words of the Pentateuch and exclaim, 
"In the beginning, God," — God is the beginning of 
every life, the foundation principle of all being, and to 
God (infinite goodness) we must all trace our origin. 
If God be for us, who or what can prevail against us? 
if we are partakers of God's infinite nature, how can 
we be subject to any finite power? we must direct our 
thought immediately to the supreme fountain of all 
life and make God the all in all of being in our 
thought. We must look at each other in spirit as in 
God, as all alike partakers of the divine nature; we 
must forget all save the atma, the absolutely pure and 
only really immortal part of our being. Gazing at a 
patient in spirit and not in sense, with the clear vision 
of the soul, we see the soul in another, all phantasms 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 201 

of mortal sense are blotted out, all the will-o'-the-wisps 
of earthly fancy and illusion fade away, and, standing 
face to face with man in truth, with man as Son of 
God in heaven, we see the Father in the Son, recogniz- 
ing the Eternal Parent in his offspring. 

The fourth gospel teaches this glorious truth esoter- 
ically; exoteric interpreters claim all the utterances 
ascribed to Jesus as pertaining to a solitary embodi- 
ment of divinity in Palestine nearly two thousand 
years ago, but spiritual discernment troubles not itself 
with history ; it recognizes as ever present the life of 
God in man, and thus, overlooking all ancestral taint 
as derived from the first man, Adam, it acknowledges 
only the second Adam, the Christ, the Lord from 
heaven. Paul the Gnostic undoubtedly labored hard 
to impress these esoteric verities upon the minds of the 
Christians of the first century ; he never talked to 
them of Christ as a personality but as a living principle 
of truth within them. Christ in them the hope of 
glory meant the soul, the discovery of which assured 
those who found it of endless and fadeless glory. 
Paul's attitude toward bodily dissolution appears to 
have been one of utter indifference coupled with per- 
fect submission and resignation to Divine Will. He 
speaks at times as though debating the question with 
himself, as to whether it is more desirable to prolong 
existence on the mortal plane, or to quit the earthly 
tabernacle ; but one way or the other, let God's will 
be done, says the devoted apostle. 

A considerable amount of misapprehension seems 
to prevail among many as to what the mortal body 
really is and what earthly discipline is designed for; 
the strangest theories are promulgated in some quar- 



202 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

ters which by reason of manifest inconsistency demand 
rebuke and refutation. A prevalent idea among some 
metaphysicians seems to be that the physical universe 
is an unreality, a dream, a phantom, a shadow ; in one 
sense it is just that and nothing more, but shadows are 
cast by substances ; if there be a subjective there must 
also be an objective state ; reflections are produced by 
what is more than a reflection ; so the physical uni- 
verse is the reflection of the spiritual ; matter is only a 
shadow, spirit is the only substance; everything is 
spiritual, and indestructible, and being so is infinitely 
greater than mortal belief makes it 

Diseases are inverted mental images, misapprehen- 
sions of the truth of being, the sorriest and most mis- 
erable illusions, unworthy of an instant's countenance. 
Spiritual man in health is God's reflection of himself, 
physical man in health is man's reflection of himself. 
A perfect reflection is neither an evil nor error, it oc- 
casions no pain, sorrow or distress, it is beautiful to 
gaze upon, lovely to the view. Physical man in health 
is truth's reflection, wisdom's mirror, not indeed a 
reality in the sense that spirit is reality, but the beau- 
tiful product of a beautiful reality, like unto a lovely 
landscape depicted in clear waters, or a charming pic- 
ture depicted on a screen. Physical man is created 
perfect by spirit, and while not destined forever to re- 
main as a separate and apparently self- existent entity, 
is nevertheless produced as mind appears to mind, seek- 
ing expression. 

Generation is a spiritual, not a physical act; mind 
wishes to reflect its image, mind desires communion 
with mind, and in the attempt made by God's ideas to 
communicate and manifest themselves intelligently, the 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LV1LLE. 203 

one to the other, the physical universe, including physi- 
cal man, is brought into existence. The mortal mind 
is thus created, it is man's creation, and originally im- 
perfect though not sinful; sin commences when the 
creature turns away from the creator and desires a life 
apart from the fountain of all good. 

A question constantly raised by students is, to 
what extent is faith necessary on the part of the pa- 
tient ? Some appear to teach the absolute necessity of 
faith prior to healing, in a manner calculated to render 
it impossible for a large percentage of earnest seekers 
after health to receive it. To assist such enquirers as 
far as possible has been one of our principal aims in 
preparing these addresses for the press. There are 
without doubt several kinds of faith mentioned in the 
Bible as there are several kinds of wine mentioned in 
its pages. True, vital, saving faith, faith necessary to 
salvation as it is often called, is not simple belief, it is 
a result of spiritual unfoldment, it is the natural and 
inevitable effect of the spirit ualization of the believer. 
This faith James defines as inseparable from good 
works ; in his epistle which Luthur did not understand 
and therefore rejected, he contrasts two opposite kinds 
of faith as unlike each other as are the two kinds of 
wine mentioned in different parts of the Bible, the one 
being held up to execration and the other cordially 
recommended to the attention of all who wished to 
preserve their health and vigor. As unlike as the pure, 
unfermented juice of the grape is to the abominable 
health and morality destroying stimulant, the sale and 
consumption of which is the deepest degradation of 
civilized communities and the blackest spot on Amer- 
ica's as well as on England's escutcheon, so unlike are 



204: LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

false and true faith, the one like alcohol leads to bitter 
persecution, hatred, revenge and murder in the name of 
religion, while the other brings forth only the peacea- 
ble fruits of righteousness. 

Faith rests on evidence, mortal belief too often re- 
lies solely on fanatical prejudice and superstition. True 
faith is only one degree less than absolute spiritual 
knowledge or divine understanding; mortal belief is 
founded in most instances on nothing more credible 
than idle tales invented by ignorance and malice to win 
the unwary into the embrace of a dominant autocracy in 
which the rights of the individual are crushed beneath 
the relentless wheels of a tyrant Juggernaut. Aristoc- 
racy engenders mortal belief, democracy encourages the 
individual to place himself on a level with all other 
human beings; and instead of telling him to bend in 
abject submission to another finite mind, fallible and 
liable to error as his own, it directs him to the central 
sun of being, to the immortal luminary, even his own 
immortal soul. God is in me and I am in God, says 
the one who has discovered his own soul; have you 
found your soul? not are you in danger of losing it ? is 
the question asked by the true spiritual director, who 
is not a prelate or a master, but simply a guide to the 
less experienced along the lengthy journey which most 
at least must take from the city of destruction into 
which they were born to the celestial city whither the 
road of earthly discipline, no matter how long and 
weary it may be, is ever tending. 

It is all in vain to teach a philosophy of negation 
and label it spiritual science ; science is knowledge, not 
ignorance, neither nescience nor sciolism nor psuedo- 
science can heal ihe sick and cast out devils ; only the 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 205 

bright light of truth dawning upon the soul can melt 
the icy barriers of prejudice and error which hold it 
away from salvation, and what is salvation but extri- 
cation from mortal misbelief According to the theor- 
izing of those who draw no clear line of distinction 
between saving faith and mere belief, theory and prac- 
tice are so confounded that the former is supposed to 
include the latter. Salvation through belief in truth 
is impossible unless belief leads to action, and no fur- 
ther than belief does lead to action on the part of the 
believer. 

What is sensible, rational belief? and remember 
there is such a thing as rational belief, and while belief 
is no substitute for knowledge it is the next thine? to 
it ; it is far less than knowledge oftentimes, it can 
never at its very best be quite equal to knowledge, but 
it may be on the road to knowledge, it may even be 
termed a lesser degree of knowledge, and is so accepted 
practically in every court of justice in the world, and 
in every daily transaction in business circles. Judge 
and jury sum up evidence and pronounce accordingly ; 
they have not seen a crime committed, it is true, but 
they have examined and cross-examined evidence, wit- 
nesses have been called repeatedly to the stand and 
questioned with a view to extracting from them the 
utmost they know bearing on the case in hand. No 
sensible person could be guilty of the manifest absurd- 
ity of accepting testimony against his own positive 
knowledge as an eye-witness, but as decisions have to 
be arrived at in many instances where testimom^ is all 
that judge and jury have to go upon, so in almost 
every instance in daily life, faith, in its lower meaning 
of belief in the credibility of testimonv Avhich does not 



206 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

fail when submitted to the closest reasoning, has to be 
relied on. 

You may marvel at some people's obtuseness and 
incredulousness, but no honest skepticism can ever be 
sinful. The fact that it is honest is enough to prove it 
honorable and upright. Agnosticism, a merely nega- 
tive condition of mind, may not be so conducive to a 
quick response to spiritual action as a more enlightened 
condition ; but as an agnostic may be a thoroughly 
honest person and have the sincerest desire to learn, be 
in continual and aspiring readiness to accept truth im- 
mediately it appeals to him, agnosticism or skepticism, 
in other words ignorance and doubt, are no insur- 
mountable barriers for either healer or patient to con- 
front. Belief rests on evidence. How can I believe 
without evidence ? and I have had no evidence sufficient 
to convince me. I would believe if I could, I don't 
want to be an unbeliever, but I cannot believe without 
more light than I ever expect to receive in this world 
at least. Such are the expressions we are constantly 
hearing from the lips of those invalids who cannot 
understand how they are going to reach the Jordan, or 
find the pool of Siloam, in whose healing tide they may 
lose their sickness and their pain. 

The true spiritual scientist takes such people as he 
finds them and trusts to the active aggressive action of 
positive spiritual light to dispel the darkness of ignor- 
ance which yet enshrouds their minds. 

Do I believe in sunshine ? Is not the question 
rather, Do I feel the warm kisses of the sunbeams on 
my cheek? Do I believe the winds are blowing, the 
birds singing, the waters rushing, the insects humming, 
nay, do I realize these sights and sounds of nature ? I 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLTILLE. 207 

may indeed, if I am blind or deaf, accept the word of 
truthful witnesses and feel convinced they are not 
deceived when they tell me of what I cannot individ- 
ually apprehend ; but before I can enjoy any certainty 
on these matters I must come in relation with them for 
myself through the awakenment of powers heretofore 
dormant in my being. 

To demand belief as a prerequisite to healing, with- 
out defining; how faith comes about is unreasonable in 
the extreme. But it will be argued, does not the New 
Testament tell us that Jesus said to many whom he 
was instrumental in healing, "Thy faith hath made 
thee whole," and are we not told of many instances 
where he spoke approvingly of the great faith mani- 
fested by some who had not as yet been the recipients 
of any special blessing? The faith thus commended 
seems to have sprung from two sources, sometimes 
from one, sometimes from the other, and possibly in 
some cases from a combination of both. There can be 
no doubt that many in the surrounding country had 
heard the story of the wonderful cures performed by 
Jesus on those who were considered hopelessly sick, in- 
sane, or even dead, and having investigated some of 
the alleged cases of recovery and found them evidently 
genuine, they naturall} T were inclined to believe on the 
testimony of those whom they knew were relating 
positive fact when they described the manner in which 
they were healed. 

Many of those whom Jesus helped appeared to be 
in some doubt as to the manner in which they were 
helped. In the case of a young man who received his 
sight the writer of the story implies that he knew little 
or nothing about his case except that he was formerly 



208 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

blind, but after having received a treatment from Jesus 
his sight came to him. 

Not in all instances, not in the majority even, does 
it appear that patients really knew how they were 
healed, but then how many people are there today who 
really know how the sunlight invigorates them, or how 
the air and food nourish and sustain their bodies ? The 
great bulk of mankind stand in the relation of passive, 
unthinking, unknowing recipients of daily blessings. 
They have instinct or reason enough to place them- 
selves within the reach of light and air ; they know 
enough to eat food, and instinct, if not reason, teaches 
them how to select it ; so is it in ninety -nine cases out 
of every hundred with those who place themselves in 
the hands of a doctor or healer. It sh Duld not be so ; 
persons ought to be better informed, acting less in the 
dark than they usually do. Still so ready is God 
through Nature to bless us all that unless we actually 
turn away from what is needful for our sustenance we 
are sustained. 

The understanding of truth is indeed necessary as a 
protection against the manifold errors and seductions 
with which all are constantly surrounded. Intelligent 
faith is a result of the partial understanding of truth 
at least ; faith may be eventually lost in sight as the 
twilight of morning is lost m the fuller brightness of 
noonday ; but to confound mere unsustained belief 
with any spiritual power capable of restoring the sick 
to health is to so confound truth and error as to make 
them almost synonymous. If you as a healer go to a 
patient suffering in darkness and foul air, and you open 
the windows and let in the sunbeams and fresh currents 
of wholesome atmosphere, you do not demand of the 



LECTURE EY W. J. C0LVILLE. 209 

sufferer that he shall believe in your power to do so be- 
fore you have demonstrated your ability. The only 
attitude which places a barrier in the healer's way is a 
dominant, obstinate, aggressive error in a patient's 
mind, which causes him to wilfully spurn or reject the 
overtures of healing strength in a spirit of obstinate 
perversity, contempt and scorn. The proper attitude 
for a person to assume who knows nothing of spiritual 
science is a calm, quiet, negative attitude of receptivity 
to evidence if it be presented. 

The truly scientific spirit is the only desirable one 
to cultivate. A scientist is supposed to have no 
opinion on a subject of which he knows nothing. He 
is, however, prepared to witness phenomena dispas- 
sionately and carefully and impartially weigh all 
evidence presented. Now let us see wherein faith, 
confidence, indeed absolute knowledge is required 
on the part of the healer, while the patient, on the 
occasion of a first introduction to metaphysics, should 
hold a calm position of agnosticism. If you advertise 
as a healer and undertake to treat the sick m mind and 
body, society has a right to expect that you have had 
some practical and indeed incontestable evidence of the 
value of a mode of treatment you eulogize and prac- 
tice ; you are expected not only to have some theoret- 
ical knowledge of metaphysics enabling you to talk 
well on the subject, you must ere you attempt to heal 
publicly or professionally have obtained some evidence 
not only that spiritual science is demonstrable some- 
where and by some people, but that you yourself can 
demonstrate it, and indeed have done so. 

Never rashly precipitate yourself into a position 
you may find through maturer experience you are unfit 



210 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

to fill. The qualifications for teaching classes are dis- 
tinct from those necessar}^ for individual practice. In 
class teaching you only need to be able to argue the 
matter well, you have only to appeal to the intellect of 
your students, while in healing you have to individu- 
ally apply your mind to the work of demonstrating 
what you teach by reducing theory to practice. A 
teacher does his work if he enlightens the minds of his 
students and aids them to reduce the theories into 
practice ; but the healer, though it is well for him to 
be an eloquent speaker, one able to teach classes, or at 
least converse in private with ease and fluency, may, 
though he cannot talk well, heal wonderfully, while 
those who can teach admirably are not always in the 
right mental condition to heal. A public, busy life, 
crowded with miscellaneous cares, presses very hard 
upon a healer, while one who is simply a teacher can 
usually withstand the wear and tear of active life on 
the material plane very well. A healer ought to have 
many opportunities for privacy, should devote much 
time and thought in solitude to spiritual things, should 
live a contemplative, studious, secluded life as far as 
possible, and whenever practical should live in a quiet 
house in a not very noisy neighborhood. Teachers 
have to live more publicly, they must mingle with the 
outside world more extensively ; but in the case of 
healers we would add, seclusion in the ordinary sense 
of the word, is not always necessary or even desirable. 
A quiet, contented, easy frame of mind, an unruffled 
disposition superior to the storms of prevailing misbe- 
lief, ability to defy the ordinary cares of the world 
and live unmoved by the worries and vexations which 
torment ordinary persons, — all this is imperatively 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 211 

necessary, and apart from this mental serenity on the 
part of the healer we really do not see how under 
usual circumstances cases can be successfully con- 
ducted. 

If your own mind is uneasy and perplexed, if you 
cannot rise above the breakers and bid the tempest of 
your own condition to be still, if you cannot quiet the 
heavings of your own agitated breast or keep your 
own passions and appetites in subjection, how is it 
likely you should be able to do all this for others? 
Physician, heal, tranquilize, compose thyself, and en- 
deavor not to bid peace be still to the tumultuous 
waves of another's fears if your own feet are not 
firmly planted on the rock of ages. Living epistles 
are always more influential than written ones. Many 
an earnest seeker after truth has said he would gladty 
go many a mile to see a sermon put in practice, while 
he would scarcely cross the street to hear an excellent 
discourse delivered. 

To practice upon one's self is the important part of 
all practice, for when a sufferer comes to you seeking 
relief he generally gets from you through some subtle 
psychical contact an impression from your sphere, a re- 
flection of your condition. Thus some healers agitate 
and others quiet their patients, some make them worse 
while honestly desiring to better their condition ; for 
to sit still and think towards any one a thought of 
trouble, disquietude or doubt is to think into them far 
more mental poison than healing truth. The patient, 
if he succeeds in feeling a treatment at all, al- 
ways takes on the condition of the healer's mind to 
a greater or less degree. Thought is a substance ; 
thoughts travel in the air and are carried by means 



212 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVTLLE. 

of atmospheric vibration from one mind to another ; 
thoughts are the finer, words the coarser vibrations 
with which we all are constantly coming in collis- 
ion. Frequently a patient entertains a belief that he 
is the victim of some deadly malady. Medical or clair- 
voyant examination has implanted in his mind a fixed 
conviction that he is seriously ill, possibly dying. 
This impression comes often to a healer, as thought can 
be heard often far more distinctly than words. If any 
of you when endeavoring to practice have such impres- 
sions enter your minds you may tell the sufferer that 
such thoughts have been suggested to you, but place no 
credence in their truthfulness. Never acknowledge 
they are correct ; rather cast them forth as reflected 
errors of mortal mind, and explain to the patient that 
they are only floating mental impressions wafted from 
the sphere of his opinions or fears. 

Jesus told the woman of Samaria that she had had 
five husbands and was then living with a man who was 
not her husband. In one sense then he appeared in the 
role of clairvoyant and test medium, but did he not at 
once proceed to tell her only of the living water, by 
means of which all impurities might be swept away. 

Treat diseases and crimes as one and the same. 
Show no more sympathy for one set of errors than for 
another ; give no more place in your thought to neural- 
gia, sciatica, or rheumatism than you would feel justi- 
fied in giving to theft, drunkenness or bestiality. Take 
the bull by the horns, as the old proverb expresses it ; 
deny what you see in the spirit of bidding it as an 
impious falsehood to depart and let your patient know 
instantly that you fear no disease, and do not recog- 
nize the possibility of any human being remaining a 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 213 

moment longer the slave of error than the length of 
time it takes him to turn mentally from error to truth. 
No special number of treatments need be given, no 
specified length of time occupied in treating, and no 
arbitrarily prescribed formulas be used either mentally 
or verbally. 

Spiritual Science is not Kabalism. Words, empty 
words have no saving power ; stereotyped sentences 
are often but meaningless and valueless repetitions, and 
as no man or woman living has any right to legislate 
for others as to how they should heal, beyond discoun- 
tenancing all methods opposed to a recognition of one 
sole Deity, and inconsistent with the rightful freedom 
of the indi vicinal, it must always rest with the healer 
to use or not to use any stated words set down in any 
book of instructions. 

Many Christians believe Jesus to ha^e given his dis- 
ciples the pater noster only as a model of prayer, and 
consequently the} r rarely if ever use it word for word ; 
and if that almost matchless composition of Hillel's 
which Jesus extracted from the Jewish service of his 
day was only a model or plan, a guide as to the nature 
of true petitions, we must surely recognize in this day, 
when we have no one person so far above his or her 
fellows as Jesus was above his contemporaries if his- 
tory be not false, the great necessity of granting the 
utmost latitude to individual workers in the spiritual 
vineyard at this hour. If you are to arouse faith in 
your patient you must carry with you a faith-arousing 
energy, you must be mentally brimming over with 
what inspires confidence or you cannot awaken it ; and 
just as a flower makes every one who enters the gar- 
den or conservatory acknowledge its fragrance by 



214 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

breathing sweetness on the air, so must you who aspire 
to awaken confidence in spiritual healing in others 
carry into their presence an odor of spiritual power 
which their spiritual nostrils cannot fail to detect. 

"When Jesus expressed surprise at the incredulity of 
some who could not or would not accept his offers of 
goodness he appears to have attributed their failure to 
derive assistance to an obstinate rejection of proffered 
aid, not to a simple inability to apply or to compre- 
hend truth. 

Such expressions as quenching *or grieving the 
spirit, or blaspheming against the spirit of truth, can- 
not by any stretch of the imagination be applied to 
any state of mind other than a culpable one. To close 
the eye, to stop the ear, to resemble the deaf adder 
who will not hear is sinful and foolish in the extreme. 
To choose death and darkness when light and life are 
offered is the only sin of unbelief of which the Bible 
properly interpreted makes any mention ; and as met- 
aphysical healing must be taught on a purely theologi- 
cal basis, understanding theology to be as much the 
science of divine truth as geology is the science of the 
earth you must ever remember you are not responsible 
for failure resulting from the turpitude of those who 
want to be saved in their sins and not from them. 
Such a desire as the wish to have strength to do more 
evil can only bring disastrous failure to those who 
desire health and strength only that they may pervert 
these blessings to unholy ends. 

Perfect health and happiness are rewards of virtue. 
They are never concomitants of crime. You cannot 
cure an ailment if sin is the cause of it unless you can 
succeed in inducing your patient to renounce iniquity. 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 215 

Allow us here a case in point by way of illustration. \ 
A man is ill from the effects of debauchery, drunken- J 
ness and licentiousness have laid him low, doctors or j 
magnetists may be able to tinker up his body suffi- 
ciently to enable him to go out on another drunken 
spree ; they may help to raise him from his bed only 
to give him the license, misnamed liberty, he craves of 
again frequenting some abominable haunt of evil where 
he will spend the time and money he ought to devote 
to the proper maintenance of home and the payment 
of just debts ; is that a cure which helps a man to com- 
mit more sin, to do more mischief ? A thousand times, 
no ! In that state of mind he is better ill, if illness 
incapacitates from further prodigality. As long- as he 
only desires strength to pervert it, you can no more 
give him what he asks and treat in accordance with 
truth than you can give a person a draught of poison 
because he calls out for it and offers to compensate 
you handsomely if you become his abettor in doing 
wrong. Morality first, bodily health afterward. Spir- 
itual miracles in the shape of moral transformations 
first, and then a sound healthy body, and the full 
enjoyment of all innocent earthly pleasures. 

Metaphysicians must deal deadly blows at sin, they 
must be purifiers of society on a moral plane, not imi- 
tators of those quacks in theology or medicine who 
endeavor to save people, not from the love and prac- 
tice of evd, but from the disagreeable consequences 
ensuing from its commission. As long as error is 
hugged to the mental bosom, as long as desires and 
thoughts are impure, so long must pain, the voice of 
the alarmist be heard. Pain calls attention to error; 
suffering is itself both the effect and remover of wrong. 
41 



216 LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

Thus all endeavors to heal the body while the mind is 
yet in error and morals are depraved is not only fool- 
ish and impossible, but all such attempts are to be 
classed as malpractice ; they are malpractitioners and 
nothing else who do not make bodily health subserv- 
ient to morality. 

Just as the world is safer when criminals and luna- 
tics are confined and not allowed to roam at large, 
though no one is the safer for any criminal or insane 
person being punished instead of reformed or cured, so 
it is better for all concerned that those who are so 
fixed in the love of evil that they only crave strength 
and opportunity to misuse it should remain physically 
incapable until the angel of moral healing opens the 
prison doors of their captive minds, and setting them 
free from moral and intellectual darkness, invites them 
out into the green pastures and beside the still waters 
of outward health and comfort corresponding to and 
resulting from spiritual liberation. 



LECTUEE XI 



HOW CAN WE TRACE DISEASES TO THEIR SOURCE, AND 
ERADICATE THEIR CAUSE, WHEN THEY ARE PRESUMA- 



BLY THE RESULT OF HEREDITARY INFLUENCE 



IN this the eleventh lecture in our present course we 
shall endeavor to give yet more explicit directions 
to our students and readers on the subject of hereditary 
influence than Ave have yet attempted, and we will 
here remark that we have chosen for the topic of our 
present lecture the question, "How can we trace dis- 
eases to their source, and eradicate their cause, when 
they are presumably the result of hereditary influ- 
ence?" at the earnest request of many who in com- 
mencing practice or in the endeavor to comprehend 
metaphysical instructions have found themselves 
baffled at the outset by the thought that if diseases can 
be transmitted from parent to child, from one genera- 
tion to another even through a succession of centuries, 
it must be a hopeless task to endeavor to eradicate by 
a few simple mental treatments what inheres in the 
very constitution and temperament of the individual 
we are endeavoring to treat. In our written instruc- 
tions, originally intended for private reference only, 
but afterwards sold publicly at a nominal price, the 
words occur, "Deny hereditary disease." As those 
instructions are somewhat too condensed for those who 

217 



218 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

have not pretty thoroughly absorbed a general outline 
of metaphysical principles, we have found it necessary 
to explain on many occasions that these instructions 
were simply a condensed recapitulation in very concise 
form, introducing the fewest number of words possible, 
designed for the use of those who wanted to keep by 
them a general digest of the plan of action recom- 
mended by us in our classes. As such words as 
" deny " and " denial " in their metaphysical sense are 
interpreted and the interpretation elaborated by ques- 
tions and answers in our classes, it may seem strange 
to those who are not familiar with the exact meaning 
of these words in their metaphysical significance to be 
told to deny hereditary disease. Let us explain some- 
thing on this score in this lecture. We must admit 
certainly that in measure on the external plane of 
thought and feeling all children take after their 
parents, and often after remote ancestors, while in 
physical appearance and general outward bearing fam- 
ily as well as racial peculiarities are often distinctly 
marked ; but as the immortal spirit of man, the essen- 
tial soul or essence of life, is not begotten through 
proccesses of physical generation, in the highest sense 
of this most paradoxical phrase you never had a 
parent, and you were never born. Such an astounding 
declaration, unfamiliar though it be to ordinary ears, 
is as familiar to diligent students of Greek phil- 
osophy, to say nothing of those who have penetrated 
into the inner sense of the sacred literature of the 
East, the Jewish and Christian Scriptures included, as 
any words w T hich can fall from the lips of the most 
commonplace conversationalist on every -day topics of 
interest related to the mundane sphere. 



LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 219 

You were never born, but what are you ? You in 
truth, you in reality, are an immortal spiritual entity, 
an outbirth from the Eternal Spirit. You are a spark 
of the infinite fire which burns at the heart of the 
universe, through the countless ages of eternity ; you 
are not a creature of dust and clay, neither are you a 
creation of mortal mind ; you had not your origin in 
protoplasm, you did not spring from animalcules and 
gradually wend your way up from matter to immortal 
spirit. You are an ultimate atom, an essential primary 
in the realm of immortal being, and what you are as a 
child of God, an immortal soul, is all we have to con- 
sider in the higher metaphysics. 

Plato taught the Greek academicians centuries 
before the commencement of the Christian Era this 
great truth of man's eternal essence and absolutely 
immortal constitution. From whence did Plato gain 
such transcendent knowledge ? how did such a thought 
ever enter the mind of man ? from what supernal state 
of spiritual understanding did a knowledge of the es- 
sential ego descend onto the plane of man's outer con- 
sciousness so that it could be spoken and written about, 
discussed in the schools, accepted by the truly wise 
and laughed to scorn by the materialist ? Did such a 
truth as this come from heaven, direct from the throne 
of the Almighty as a distinct and definite revelation of 
truth which God gave in the exercise of his right of 
simple sovereignty to his specially elect? No. No 
such view of revelation or spiritual discovery is neces- 
sary to account for man's comprehension of himself in 
truth. God is no more willing to reveal himself to one 
than to another ; there are no special providences in 
the old orthodox sense. God has no favorites. He is 



220 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

no respecter of persons, and therefore he is as willing 
one should know the truth as that it should be im- 
parted to another ; but a law inheres in the very nature 
of being that knowledge can be only attained through 
effort, and the requisite effort can only be made by the 
living of a specially pure and aspiring life. The entire 
thought must be directed to the spiritual truths of 
being ; no desire which conflicts with the monitions- of 
the highest principle within us or which appeals to us 
must be encouraged, the lower self must be forgotten 
in the higher. The old man of mortal mind and sense 
must be crucified with all its affections and lusts that 
the new man of truth and purity may be revealed to 
the outer understanding, over which it casts a halo of 
immortal glory and which it purifies and uses as a 
means for expressing on the external plane of mental 
demonstration the ever-living truth of absolute spiritual 
being. 

The Gnostic author of the Fourth Gospel, common- 
ly called John's, relating a conversation on the new 
birth between Jesus and JNTicodemus, puts these words 
into the lips of the great enlightener : " Except a man 
be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
Why does he not say, "You cannot enter the king- 
dom ? " Surely because the notion of going to heaven 
is altogether erroneous ; " the kingdom of heaven is 
within " you ; it is already within you, but most of you 
fail to discern it. Can ye discern the signs of the times ? 
some of you can more than others; signs there are in 
the heavens above and in the earth beneath, but can 
you interpret them ? How much have you discovered 
concerning the nature which lies all around you? how 
much do you know of yourselves? These are the ques- 



LECTUKE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 221 

tions asked by a truly spiritual catechist. Look within, 
is the command of spiritual teachers, not to some ex- 
ternal light. Hug not to yourselves the vain delusion 
that you can go to heaven after the death of your 
body, and on making a journey or taking an aerial 
flight through space reach some other* world where you 
will know what you cannot discover here. Look 
within your own spirit and there discover the ever- 
burning light of the divine presence, the shekinah 
illumining the holy of holies, the ever-burning lamp 
revealing the altar of God in the soul of man. 

" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God," can be interpreted in no anthropomorphic sense. 
God is everywhere, and superior to every outward 
form ; with external sight no man has ever seen or will 
ever see the Eternal Being, but as man is not his ex- 
ternal shell, but a kernel of immortality disguised 
rather than revealed by an outer covering, it becomes 
necessary to rend the veil in the midst of the human 
temple, and that is accomplished when the son of man 
dies in you individually, that the Son of God may rise 
triumphant from the tomb. The whole story of the 
life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus is a 
spiritual allegory, and has in its highest interpretation 
no reference to time and place; the events recorded 
in the Gospels are not in their inner meaning mor- 
sels of external history at all; they are spiritual 
truths concealed in the guise of historical incidents, 
and while the crude and sensuous view of the Gos- 
pels taken by those who consider them as portions 
of the literature of Solar Mythology can never be 
accepted as their final interpretation by the spiritually 
minded, even that view can be pressed into the service 



222 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

of spiritual revelation, as solar myths themselves were 
not simply astronomical creations ; they were figurative 
characters designed to express spiritual truths veiled 
pictorially in a fanciful history of the journey ings of 
the constellations. 

In the ancient world, in very remote times, even in 
buried continents and islands, as we have endeavored 
to show in our historical and scientific lectures on the 
ante-diluv T ian world, there were not a few sages who 
were so highly illumined with interior knowledge that 
they discovered facts and solved problems with regard 
to man's spiritual constitution utterly insoluble in the 
light of ordinary scientific attainment. 

All spiritual questions are the x in algebra to stu- 
dents of nature merely on its physical side. There is 
far more truth than poetry in the assertion, man has 
seven senses; five senses can never enable their pos- 
sesor to penetrate into the spiritual arcana. A sixth 
sense is necessary to constitute one a clairvoyant, a 
clairaudiant, or a psychometer, while a seventh sense 
is required for one to discern the innermost truths of 
spiritual being. The French academicians, when they 
investigated what has been^commonly called intuition, 
were many of them in favor of pronouncing it a sixth 
sense, and what they styled intuition can be thus cor- 
rectly defined; but true intuition, which far surpasses 
all clairvoyant, clairaudiant, or psychometric ability is 
a seventh sense, and for that reason beyond even the 
scope of the researches of all who confine themselves 
to ordinary phases of mediumship, perception and oc- 
cultism. The senses of mankind through long ages 
have gradually developed, not all at once, but one by 
one, and it is a noticeable fact that when one sense is 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 223 

dormant or absent another sense is usually almost pre- 
ternaturally keen. Blind people are often, on the 
whole, quite as intelligent as those who can see, for 
what they lack in one direction they more than make 
up in others; the blind frequently have unusually keen 
hearing, taste, smell and touch ; their hearing and touch 
are apt to be phenomenally keen by reason of their 
depending on those senses to compensate them for lack 
of sight. Deaf and dumb persons are often possessed 
of unusually quick eyesight, and their senses of smell 
and touch are also in frequent instances of unusual 
power. Now why is this ? What are senses from a 
metaphysical point of view, as there can be neither 
life, intelligence, nor sensation in matter? How can 
we talk of bodily senses ? Senses are merely avenues 
of perception; they are the result of the endeavor of 
the spirit to express itself in definite directions. 

Senses are in no sense products of the material 
organism; they are, on the contrary, what Bunyan 
called them in his " Holy War," " Gates of Mansoul." 
The spirit itself possesses power of vision ; it creates 
by its own volition an outward frame through which 
to express itself, and, as it desires to exert its power of 
seeing through that form which it has fashioned, its 
action upon the embryo creates an eye, but in order to 
create a visual organ on the external plane it needs to 
cooperate with that radiation of spiritual force which 
in its expression we call light ; thus the desire to ex- 
press the power to see, through a fleshly organism, and 
the action of light upon the embryonic form in the 
maternal womb is necessary to the production of a 
perfect bodily e} 7 e. 

It is the same with all the other functions of the 



224: LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

body ; they are merely appliances in the organic struct- 
ure which the spirit creates, created for the express 
purpose of giving expression to preexistent powers in 
spirit which seek expression in external form; thus, 
the power to touch, to taste, to smell, and to hear, are 
all necessary to the formation of organs through which 
faculties can be manifested, and, as a power must have 
something to exert itself upon to make itself manifest, 
odors, flavors, sounds and substances are necessary to 
the development of the four above-mentioned organs 
of appreciation. When the child is in its mother's 
womb, it receives every impression through her con- 
sciousness ; whatever affects a pregnant woman affects 
her offspring, and we do not believe any child was ever 
born whose condition did not register and reflect that 
of the maternal parent during the term of her preg- 
nancy. 

Life is present at the moment of conception ; if life 
did not inhere in the original form there could be no 
life manifested afterward, for evolution can only unroll 
what involution has previously rolled up. In the essen- 
tial germ of life every potency exists wiiich can by any 
possible contingency be expanded during the period of 
gestation. There is no such thing as spontaneous gene- 
ration, all life proceeds from prior life, and the suppo- 
sition that intelligence commences at a certain stage of 
embryonic development is a self-evident fallacy in the 
eyes of all who have conquered the first principles of 
true science ; a reverse view of the matter is not only 
scientifically absurd, but encourages abortion and other 
disgraceful crimes too infamous to mention; judged by 
its fruits of flagrant immorality, materialistic sciolism 
stands judged, convicted and condemned. 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 225 

Truth never countenances immoral conduct ; error, 
on the contrary, always palliates and makes excuse 
for crime. Materialistic views of ante-natal life 
have done more to sanction and encourage abortion 
than all other causes put together. Remember, oh, all 
ye women everywhere, that you are parents from the 
moment of conception, you are mothers of living chil- 
dren directly impregnation has taken place, and you 
can no more destroy the life in your womb before its 
birth than you can commit infanticide without being 
guilty of murder. Whenever a woman knows she has 
conceived a child let her take upon herself courageously 
a mother's duties, and no matter what her earthly lot 
may be, trust in God to give her strength to bear a 
mother's part in truth and purity. From the first 
instant of ante-natal life, the forming mind of the child 
(for remember the mind is formed from the spirit 
during its efforts to express itself outwardly) derives 
all its impressions from the mind of the mother ; what- 
ever she desires creates a desire in her child ; whatever 
she loves creates an affection in her offspring ; whatever 
she hates produces an aversion, and so on through the 
w r hole catalogue of human desires, attractions and dis- 
likes. 

The father's mind influences the child but very 
slightly in any direct sense, but as in mam r instances a 
wife is under the mental jurisdiction of her husband to 
a very great extent, his thoughts are communicated to 
the children in a very pronounced degree. It ir ob- 
served on all hands by those who make a study of 
heredity, that when a woman is very much under the 
influence of her husband's mind, her children are liable 
to take strongly after their father, while, when a mother 



220 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

has been in a self-poised attitude during the gestative 
period, and her husband has had little control over her 
thoughts and feelings, the children resemble their 
mother in the most pronounced manner. 

As every influence which tends to fashion tempera- 
ment and disposition proceeds from mind and appeals 
to mind, close physical contact with any person does 
not itself affect offspring to any considerable degree. 
A woman may live with her child's father on the most 
intimate terms and scarcely spend an hour day or night 
away from him during the whole nine months, and yet 
her child may be as unlike him as possible. She may 
on the other hand be thousands of miles removed from 
him in body, yet if her thought continually goes out to 
him, earthly distance being no barrier to the flight of 
mind, the child may be what people would call the very 
image of an absent father. 

This conclusion, which Ave have seen verified in num- 
berless instances, leads us to pursue the thought still 
further and see how easy it is for children to grow up 
like people who have gained an ascendancy in thought 
over a mother's mind, while physically they have never 
had the slightest connection even to a hand-shake. 

Sometimes a woman will feel herself strongly 
drawn to some man or woman with whom she is not 
acquainted ; they are never introduced, they never pass 
a word with each other; the one who unconsciously 
affects the other has no notion that the one whom 
he is influencing exists ; although the other party 
has been strongly drawn to him, he has never even 
noticed her so far as to bestow a passing glance upon 
her in a crowd ; still having been powerfully attracted 
to him, she by means of the law of elective affinity, 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 227 

and that strange and subtle power of selection which 
all creatures and even inanimate things seem to pos- 
sess, she perpetually absorbs the emanations with which 
he charges universal mental atmosphere, and we must 
not allow ourselves to forget that spiritual science 
demonstrates the substantial nature of thought ; 
thoughts are things, they vibrate upon the unseen atmos- 
phere and can be attracted by mental volition or un- 
willingly absorbed through fear. We have hinted at 
this fact in our lecture on Mind-Reading, Thought 
Transference and Kindred Phenomena, but it would 
take many a bulky volume were we to pursue this sub- 
ject to any depth or at any length ; we must leave you 
to amplify our meagre suggestions through } T our own 
study and at your private leisure ; all we can now do 
is to emphasize a law generally unrecognized except by 
special students of spiritual and occult science. The 
law is 'that every human mind gives off vital emanations 
with which the atmosphere of the globe is perpetually 
filled ; these emanations are spirits or powers of the 
air, the}^ have form and can be seen by those endowed 
with clairvoyant vision ; " mind readers " are more sensi- 
tive to them than other people, but all persons are sub- 
ject to their influence unless they have risen so high in 
spirituality that they are proof against all mortal mind 
exhalations, for these forces in the atmosphere are just 
as real and influential in the realm of thought as are 
sounds and odors on the plane of sense. 

We must here endeavor to clear up a difficulty 
which often arises with reference to unconscious mind; 
strictly speaking, all mind is conscious, all mind has 
the attribute of consciousness, but all human minds are 
not so fully conscious of their relations to their entire 



228 LECTUBE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

surroundings as to be able to determine what it is that 
affects them when they feel affected by something. 
Science alone can enable you to trace effects back to 
causes. On the material plane you are often affected 
powerfully by you know not what ; you enter a room 
and feel exhilarated or depressed, an agreeable or a 
nauseating sensation comes over you and no matter 
whether you are improved in health or made unwell 
by this something which influences you, what it is that 
influences you remains a mystery until perchance some 
day you recollect your sensations at a given time, and 
while reading a scientific work receive light on the 
reason of such (at the time) incomprehensible sensa- 
tions, or in talking with a friend you may relate a 
strange experience, whereupon he informs you of a 
similar one of his own and proceeds forthwith to en- 
lighten you as to some experiments which have thrown 
light upon the cause of it. Your sensations, you may 
discover, were due to the presence of some flower you 
did not notice or to which you attached no importance, 
or to some condition of atmosphere or degree of tem- 
perature, and as you have all doubtless had many such 
experiences and can readily follow us thus far, we must 
now ask your most thoughtful attention as we cross 
the border and invite your attention to similar ex- 
periences on a less external plane. 

Just as you experience physical sensations involun- 
tarily, and these reach you from inanimate life, such 
as flowers, etc., there can be no doubt but the majority 
of persons suffer excessively from the influence of 
mental causes entirely unknown to them and purposely 
directed to them. Thus the unconscious mind of one 
person influences the unconscious mind of another. 



LECTUEE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 229 

To illustrate still further and break down all diffi- 
culty in the way of comprehending this subject, we 
will ask you to note your sensations on first entering a 
room or taking up a letter ; you may be a perfect 
stranger in some hotel or restaurant, no one has ob- 
served your entrance or bestowed the least thought 
upon you, but you are conscious immediately of agree- 
able or disagreeable sensations overtaking you, and 
these certainly do not arise from visible causes, for 
often you feel happiest in the crudest surroundings, 
and most uncomfortable in the most luxurious; not 
only do places affect you, but you are also conscious of a 
strange influence either attractive or repellant brought 
to bear upon you from persons who bestow no 
thought on you and have not even noticed your pres- 
ence. Human minds exhale such psychic influence 
just as flowers emit perfume ; the scent of a flower is a 
result of its organization and condition, its odor may 
be pleasant to one person and disagreeable to another ; 
take lilacs as an example — the perfume of lilac is most 
grateful to some nostrils, other persons feel sick if there 
is a bunch of lilacs in their room. 

V^Our psychic emanations are always true to our con- 
dition; they are usually quite involuntary, as com- 
paratively few people deliberately set to work to 
psychologize others, but so susceptible to involuntary 
psychology are most persons, that unless they have 
made especial effort to rise above the ordinary level of 
mankind they are subject to everything, good, bad, or 
indifferent, they are like barometers and thermometers 
affected by every change in the atmosphere which 
approaches them. Deliberate psychologizing takes 
place undoubtedly in many instances, and whenever 



230 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

one person wills another to do an} 7 thing or even 
strongly desires it, he is seeking to psychologize that 
other, no matter how little he may know of the art of 
psychology ; but man's usual impressibility is the result 
of his negative condition to psychic forces as his physi- 
cally negative state makes him amenable to the in- 
fluence of all physical exhalations, and we may rest 
assured, both the outer and inner atmosphere of this 
planet are crowded with exhalations from every sort 
of mind and from every sort of body. 

Psychometry reveals a great fact when it teaches 
you by means of exact experiments to read character 
and incidents in the life of persons with whom you are 
brought en rapport, by touching some article they have 
worn or a piece of paper on which they may have writ- 
ten something. Ordinary psychometric experiments, 
however, often fail because of their not being properly 
conducted; if a crowd of handkerchiefs, gloves and 
other articles are forced upon a person of unusual sensi- 
bilities on a public platform, defmiteness is rendered 
extremely improbable, as when a crowd of minds are 
pressing upon you all at once and you are trying to 
satisfy a mixed multitude, you are in great danger of 
satisfying no one and greatly injuring yourself, as when 
you deliberately render yourself negative to every- 
body's emanations, you are liable at any moment to 
take on both their vices and their diseases. 

Spiritual science teaches you to read psychometric- 
ally from a height of superior vision ; it teaches you 
to throw yourself into a superior condition in which 
you can see what there is round about you without 
being influenced by it ; you are never safe as long as 
you strive to get down on a patient's or sitter's plane 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LV1LLE. 231 

and merge your own identity in bis aura, for by so 
doing you become immersed in tbe waves of bis mental 
and physical emanations which in tbe present average 
state of society are too often disgustingly impure. 
Diseases are contracted far less by physical contact 
thari most people imagine, though on a low plane of 
human development diseases are thus taken on ; but as 
close physical proximity usually induces a less earnest 
and active desire for another's sympathy and co- 
operation than ensues when friends are separated un- 
willingly in body by physical distance, we are all the 
recipients and also the givers of absent treatments to a 
far greater extent than perhaps any imagine. 

The nine months before birth are more important 
in shaping the disposition of a child than the seven 
years immediately following birth, which are usually 
acknowledged as those in which the most permanent 
impressions are received. Unborn children respond to 
every impulse of the mother's mind far more than they 
ever can after birth, as no association can ever be so 
intimate as that which precedes birth. 

Next to ante-natal influence, the influence exerted 
before the child is weaned is, of course, the most 
powerful and protracted in its results ; and here let 
us say that those mothers who can nurse their children 
and do not are guilty of a shameful neglect of duty, as 
no mother has a right to shirk her natural responsibil- 
ties by paying another woman to give her life to her 
offspring. However, if a mother is very ill or in a 
frightfully disturbed condition, most of all if she be a 
woman of immoral habits, the services of a conscien- 
tious, healthy wet nurse may advantageously be secured, 
for remember, it is not the milk which nourishes the 



232 LECTURE BY W. J. C0LV1LLE. 

body half so much as the psychic force which builds 
the mind which is of consequence in shaping character ; 
however, it is impossible for any true spiritual scientist 
to so far disconnect bodily conditions from mental 
states as to venture the assertion that by any possibil- 
ity any physical condition can exist which is not a cor- 
respondence to a similar state previously attained in 
mind. 

Woman suffrage, though not apparently a distinctly 
metaphysical question, bears so closely upon our sub- 
ject that we must say in passing that all true metaphy- 
sicians must be woman suffragists, they must be on the 
side of that movement which acknowledges the equal- 
ity in truth of man and woman, and though we make 
no distinction between the two, and do not try to insti- 
tute invidious comparisons between men and women, 
we must take the side of those who claim that woman's 
freedom is more important than man's, and if one sex 
must rule the other, woman had better rule man than 
man govern woman ; not only because woman is usually 
more intuitive than man, but because if a man is not 
free his influence upon the rising generation can never 
be so powerful for evil as that of a woman who is held 
in slavery, for the simple reason that man cannot be 
a mother and therefore can only indirectly through his 
influence with woman affect the rising generation to 
any very great extent. Women, love, cherish and 
honor your husbands, but do not attempt to obey them 
any further than mutual obedience is desirable and 
consistent with equality and true spiritual harmony. 

No metaphysician can be married at any altar 
where a vow of obedience is required of her which is 
not asked of her husband. In the first chapter of 



LECTURE BY W. J. CULVILLE. 233 

Genesis, where an account is given of the creation of 
mankind in truth, we read, God created males and 
females in his own image, he created them together, 
not one after the other; in the beginning they were 
divinely equal, and so they must be regarded the 
world over in every state of life if truth is to triumph 
over error. Man in truth may excel in reason, woman 
in intuitive perception ; man may be adapted to the 
rougher work of life oftentimes, while the tenderer 
and more sacred functions of maternity are reserved 
for woman only ; but as today women are as a rule 
purer than men, as they usually are less addicted to 
vice and have fewer bad habits, as society demands of 
them more spirituality than it asks for in the male sex, 
women must never for a single instant allow their bet- 
ter natures to be crushed beneath the iron heel of man's 
alleged superiority. All vaunted power and dignity 
on the part of man claiming to control woman, and all 
namby pamby sentiment expressing itself in caresses 
such as a child bestows upon a doll or a pet animal, all 
prattle about woman as a tender plant to be nurtured 
and loved but never to be taken into partnership as 
man's companion in the sober, earnest work of life, is 
just so much maudlin sentiment invented to cover 
tyranny in roses and drape manacles in silk. 

Let every woman rise to her true dignity as wife 
and mother if she be a married woman, and if she 
remain single let her support herself by fruitful and 
practical industry. Let every married woman regard 
marriage as a partnership of interests. Let woman's 
work be regarded as in all things the equal of man's ; 
husband and wife are joint bread-winners when prop- 
erly united; no honorable, self-respecting man will 



234 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

talk of supporting a woman as the creature of his 
bounty, and we are sure no right-minded woman will 
tolerate the thought of marriage as a stepping-stone to 
a home where she may eat the bread of idleness earned 
by the sweat of her husband's brow. Marriage in 
truth is the condition of angelic life reflected on earth, 
and those women only can be true to their divine mis- 
sion who resemble the sun-crowned woman in the 
twelth chapter of the Book of Kevelation, whose head 
is adorned with twelve bright stars, and whose foot 
rests upon the changing moon. "When the true princi- 
ples of heredity are understood, it will be easy to see 
how directly a child is influenced by every thought 
which passes through the father's mind if the mother 
is either subjected in will to him, or if through fear 
or apprehension or aversion she holds him continually 
before her in the thought of error. 

Kleptomania is a disease of frequent occurrence 
even in the children of the wealthy. The most influ- 
ential and wealthy persons have often been its victims. 
Why should ladies of position, possessed of ample 
means, steal from the counters of the' shops at which 
they deal ? why should they take what does not belong 
to them clandestinely when they have ample means to 
purchase all they require, and are so shocked at their 
own dishonesty afterwards that they almost immedi- 
ately return the purloined articles to their rightful 
owners? An explanation can be found in ante-natal 
influence only. A wealthy mother is often denied 
what she most craves, some secret desire and longing 
in her breast remains unsatisfied to such an extent that 
her offspring is imbued with a desire to grasp at any 
hazard and in any manner what cannot be obtained by 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 235 

lawful purchase, and in cases of kleptomania such as 
those just alluded to. we can trace the working out of 
tendencies created by mothers using artifice and deceit 
to accomplish ends they are afraid of venturing to 
bring about openly. Pregnant women who frequent 
honorable places of instruction during their husband's 
absence from home, because they are afraid he should 
know of their going to places of which he ignorantly 
and bigot edly disapproves, are sowing seeds of dissen- 
sion, dishonesty and misery untold in future genera- 
tions. From the fear of man which bringeth a snare 
you may all well pray to be delivered ; as long as you 
let your husbands frighten you into unwilling submis- 
sion to their tyranny, or into clandestine rebellion 
against it, you are on perilous ground; you may at 
any moment succumb or see your children succumb to 
the most terrible vices and diseases. If men can go to 
their clubs without their wives' approval, surely women 
can go to respectable meetings where they meet re- 
fined and honorable women without standing in jeop- 
ardy of a husband's anger. 

Let all girls be educated from their tenderest years 
to shun tyrannical men as husbands. Before marriage 
a young woman should prove herself so rightfully in- 
dependent, so loyally principle-asserting, that her in- 
tended husband will know he can never intimidate her 
into making unwarrantable concessions to his arbitrary 
dictation after marriage. 

Women's Rights and female education are at the 
very foundation of all reform ; woman in bondage en- 
slaves man, woman in freedom is his only elevator. 

TThen you are called upon to treat hereditary ail- 
ments, weaknesses, or tendences, to speak more cor- 



236 LECTURE BY W, J. COLVILLE. 

rectly, call upon the immortal spirit of your patient to 
arise and assert its true power, place before a victim of 
dishonor a picture of himself in moral health, make 
him regard himself in the light of a conqueror, strong 
to resist and vanquish error, and never consider your 
work accomplished until you have convinced him that 
all error is of the earth, earthy, a false creation of 
mortal mind, a reflection of error, the likeness of a lie, 
no more real than any phantom, no more to be dreaded 
than the hobgoblins of childish fancy. 

All theories of hereditary evil and of obsession 
have to be boldly met by the affirmation of the abso- 
lute power of truth and good. Mortal mind creations 
are unreal as mortal mind itself. Children of unreality 
are unreal, like their progenitors. Jesus called disease 
an error collectively and inclusively a liar from the 
beginning ; when truth was demonstrated in the heal- 
ing of the sick he saw Satan like lightning fall from 
heaven. 

Mortal error strives to usurp the throne of immortal 
truth. It vaunts its own empty nothingness into the 
throne of God, and there as Beast and False Prophet 
it demands the worship of mankind. It claims to be 
God and exacts homage under the name of Nature, 
Natural Law, Necessity, or something else which 
tickles the perverted understanding of the worldly 
wise. How can error prevail ? How can inherited evil 
triumph when God is the sole Creator and every soul is 
God's offspring? Truth says to the foul brood of the 
serpent error, You are nothing, you are shadows, you 
are mists, you are shadows flung against the light, and 
as rapidly as daylight dismisses and annihilates the 
darkling shades of night, truth crushes error, effect- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 237 

ually, once for all, by virtue of its own positive and 
active moral strength. Darkness and disease are alike 
appearances, illusions, negations. Thus inherited evil 
in its last analysis is inherited darkness, inherited nega- 
tion. Can darkness contend successively with light ? 
Can negation contend successfully with industructible 
reality ? You cannot destroy a reality ; yen cannot 
annihilate an atom, or extinguish that which rests on 
a fundamental principle of being. To say disease is 
something, a real condition, as much so as health, 
as ignorant pathologists declare, is to announce 
in so many words the utter impossibility of its de- 
struction ; if disease were a reality as health is a 
reality, no one could ever cure it or destroy it ; all 
remedies would be useless, as it is impossible to destroy 
a single particle of the substance of the universe ; but 
if disease is only a phantasm, an unreal state, no more 
real than the ignis fatuus which lures a traveler to 
destruction, and yet apparent to sense just as the ignis 
fatuus appears real, we can then see clearly that truth 
and understanding, virtue in its own almightiness, can 
bid disease and devils alike to fly, for both are errors of 
mortal imagination, lies and the children of lies, and 
thus the only devil in the universe. 

In all your practice you must insist upon the phan- 
tasmagoric character of all disorders. You must never 
for a solitary instant allow yourselves to believe in dis- 
ease as anything more than the fabulous creation of 
mortal mind, for if it once gains possession of your 
thought- and you fear it either for yourself or for 
another, you descend onto the level of weekness and 
susceptibility which causes illness to appear in you, 
who when acting on false premises become the victim 



238 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

of a patient's disorder instead of its overcomer. Hered- 
itary ailments are no more difficult to reach than those 
recently acquired. Chronic cases are no harder than 
acute ones to deal with except by reason of the greater 
tenacity with which mortal mind clings to errors of 
long" standing than to those of recent date. There is 
but one infallible rule which works in every case, and 
is as undeviating as the rule in mathematics. Pro- 
nounce all disease a myth, a phantasy. Trust only in 
God, and fear no evil. 



LECTUEE XII. 



HOW TO APPLY THE PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE IN 
PRACTICAL TREATMENT. 

MANY persons are heard to exclaim after listening 
to lectures and reading books on Metaphysics 
that while everything sounds reasonable enough and 
the arguments appear plausible there seems no way to 
reduce the theory to practice, except perhaps in the 
case of a very few specially qualified individuals. All 
students of tkeosophy must have been struck by the 
statement constantly reiterated in theosophical publi- 
cations that only in two possible ways can the wonder- 
ful works be done which the neophyte desires to 
accomplish. One must either be a " natural born 
magician," the equivalent of what Spiritualists call a 
" good natural medium," or he must have labored, 
studied, and practiced the most rigorous self-denial, 
eventuating in that absolute control of mind over sense 
whereby alone an adept can perform what are termed 
by the world at large " stupendous miracles." As the 
word "miracle" is derived from the Latin verb mirari, 
which signifies to be astonished or to marvel, marvel- 
ous works, as we have often informed } t ou, are no more 
supernatural than the germination of a seed. 

Nothing is given by nature to those who do not 
work for it; nature has her rewards for all toilers, but 
she sends away empty-handed those who put forward 

239 



240 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

no energy to attain to honor. In every department of 
science, indefatigable ardor, unflagging industry is 
demanded of all aspirants either to fame or knowl- 
edge ; and is it reasonable to infer that when the geol- 
ogist, the chemist, the astronomer, the mathematician, 
yea, and the musician, the sculptor and the painter, 
have all to work long and earnestly ere they can rise 
to heights of attainment in their respective fields of 
operation, that by payment of a little money and the 
taking of a- short course of metaphysical instructions, 
anybody and everybody can become qualified in a 
month or so to " heal the sick and cast out devils " ? 
We have no intention of entering into a controversial 
argument on the authenticity of the Gospels, nor do 
we care to enquire how much or how little probability 
there is of Jesus ever having uttered the sentence, but 
the words themselves, " this kind cometh not forth but 
by prayer and fasting,'' embody the whole essence of 
necessary teaching for those who aspire to heal the 
sick and dispossess the minds of men of disturbing 
passions, evil tempers, unclean spirits. What is prayer 
but aspiration? what is fasting but abstinence from 
self-indulgence ? To alter the phraseology somewhat, 
no one can ever be a qualified healer of others unless 
lie has first cured himself of worldly ambitions and 
carnal lusts. 

The highest achievements in spiritual science are 
only possible to those who have successfully resisted 
every lower impulse ; we do not mean to say the low T er 
impulses must necessarily be annihilated, but they 
certainly must be held in absolute subjection. Rigid 
asceticism recommended by many schools is valuable 
only as means to an end ; if the end can be reached 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 



241 



without asceticism it may well be dispensed with. As 
questions are constantly recurring with regard to 
animal food and other hygienic and dietetic matters, it 
may be well for us to offer a word or two on these 
matters, although in the opinion of some they relate 
only to unimportant material conditions. Some meta- 
physicians affirm they can eat anything, as nothing 
hurts them ; they are therefore totally regardless of all 
the laws of health, to use a common expression ; these 
laws of health are said to be nothing but laws of mor- 
tal mind from which we need to be free, but we think 
a little closer inspection of the matter will point to a 
somewhat different conclusion. Mrs. Eddy says the 
desire for all stimulants and narcotics, including tea 
and coffee, should be regarded as a depraved taste, and 
that remark of hers opens up a wide and fertile field of 
thought and inquiry. Now, if it is of no moment 
whatever, as some sa} r , whether we eat fish, flesh or 
fowl, or subsist entirely upon a vegetarian diet, why 
lay stress, as Mrs. Eddy does in many portions of her 
book, Science and Health, on the simple table meta- 
physicians usually sit at ; why make any distinction 
Avhatever between water and whiskey, lemonade and 
brandy, or sugar and opium ? If all material things are 
simply nothing, why make any fuss about them ? The 
answer to such questions seems inevitably to be that 
even though we accept the statement, "all is mind, 
there is no matter," we are bound to consider things 
as mental if not plrysical, and that is all the difference 
between the position of a metaphysician and a physi- 
cist with regard to the external universe. 

If everything is mind, as all our perceptions are 
mental then all we eat and drink and wear is in mind ; 



242 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

all our habits then are mental, our tastes and proclivi- 
ties, our likes and dislikes are mental states, and our 
outward behavior is therefore clue to a pre-existing 
mental condition. Being asked constantly for our 
opinion on outward modes of life and ever-recurring 
practices, we have perpetually insisted upon the para- 
mount importance of cultivating such thoughts and 
inducing such mental states as lead to purity of con- 
duct. Kind words naturally flow from kind thoughts, 
as unkind thoughts inevitably result in a soured visage. 
Mental changes regulate the appearance of the head 
and face, not only of human beings but of animals. I 
Thus we can learn the disposition of persons and ani- 
mals by examining their crania, not because the cranial 
evidences are the causes of mental conditions, but be- 
cause these indications are brought about by mental 
conditions. A person or an animal does not appear 
kind or cruel, loveable or hateful because of some 
accident of physical organization, but the organization 
does most decidedly indicate the temperament and tem- 
per of the being who owns it. 

You cannot take advantage of phrenology and 
physiognomy by endeavoring to change externals. 
You can only bring about external modifications by 
appealing to the mind of the person or animal whom 
you are endeavoring to improve. The marked im- 
provements constantly appearing in animals are due to 
their constant association with enlightened men and 
women ; psychically far more than physically does man 
rule the lower creation and lift it nearer and ever 
nearer to his own higher level. There can be no 
abiding health, happiness, beauty or symmetry of any 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 243 

kind where beautiful thoughts do not precede outward 
expression. 

There will never be any marked improvement in 
human manners and customs until a spiritual influence 
works at the centre of man's being to set outward 
things straight ; from within to without, riot from 
without to within, is nature's order of development. 
You cannot improve the centre by decorating the cir- 
cumference ; all attempts at making the exterior fair 
while the interior is sterile is no more genuine healing 
or reformation than it would be a genuine improvement 
in the actual condition of a tree for some one to fasten 
fruit onto barren boughs ; though you might possibly 
deceive some ignorant spectators by attaching fruit by 
means of wire to barren boughs while the root was still, 
withered and the branches unprolific. 

•Under no circumstances should a healer endeavor to 
change outward appearances as such. What would a 
physician say of some one who tried to check the man- 
ifestation of humor on the surface of the skin by 
thrusting it back into the blood through denying it 
outward expression? Quackery often seems to cure 
because it represses, but instead of benefitting the 
patient it makes him suffer far more in future ; a momen- 
tary relief may be gained, and doubtless often is, at the 
expense of years of anguish. The blood is poisoned, 
the vitals diseased, as the pimples and blotches are re- 
moved from the surface of the body. Proper medical 
treatment, electric or magnetic treatment if judiciously 
administered, would assist in bringing the humors to 
the front and then getting rid of them, which can only 
be done by strengthen in £ the svstem and giving general 
tone to the constitution. 



244 LECTUBE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

All matters of speech and etiquette must follow upon 
purer modes of thinking, as a man thinketh so he in- 
variably becomes, outwardly. We have never met a 
solitary individual whose thoughts were refined whose 
conduct was vulgar ; vulgarity is not due to outward 
circumstances ; it is not brought on by surroundings ; 
many persons are so naturally refined, nothing vulgar- 
izes them, they manifest their innate gentility, as some 
would call it, wherever they go, no matter what com- 
pany they may be forced to keep ; this gentility is 
not an assumed mask like the good behavior people 
put on in company to attract others and belie 
their real state of feeling. Keal refinement is impos- 
sible of acquirement through simple attendance at pol- 
ished seminaries or through reading fashionable 
treatises on the manners of well-bred people. Only 
when the mind is free from evil, impure, or vulgar 
thoughts, will conduct be really polite ; only when ill 
tempers are banished from thought, will pleasant words 
flow naturally from the tongue, and kindly actions 
characterize the individual. 

Superficial treatment for all manner of ailments has 
prevailed far too long ; we must change the base of 
operations if we are really to succeed in banishing suf- 
fering and distress from the midst of humanity. In 
treating a case, then, say of the opium habit, of tobacco 
chewing, of drinking, of frequenting some evil haunt, 
or any other vicious desire displayed in conduct, place 
no thought, lay no stress upon the action, endeavor by 
every means in your power to disgust your patient with 
wrong by cultivating within him the love of right. Do 
not take away medicine, tobacco, wine, or anything 
else a patient craves, but treat mentally, arguing with 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 245 

your patient the utter undesirability of relying on such 
material props for strength or comfort. Divert your 
patient's thought from all such means of sensuous 
gratification by creating a taste for other and purer 
enjoyments. Give your patient no books to read treat- 
ing upon vice, and enter into no conversation on topics 
which are always avoided in decent society. 

Truth compels us to say that a vast amount of mis- 
chief is done by writing and discoursing on social 
vices ; boys and girls do not require to be instructed in 
bad habits, nor to have their attention called to their 
lower propensities, and all reading and conversation 
which makes the lower passions a subject of considera- 
tion tends to inflame them. Children who are brought 
up to take a constant and active interest in useful pur- 
suits with which their minds are filled to the exclusion 
of objectionable ideas, have very little trouble in mas- 
tering their lower desires, while those who have no 
useful and interesting work to engage their minds 
easily fall victims to every lust. The most virtuous 
lives are lived by those actively emplo} T ed in something 
of sufficient importance and interest to keep their 
minds active in the coronal region of the brain. So 
work as to direct the bulk of your energy to the front 
of your head and you will have little difficult} 7 with 
back-brain propensities. The true spiritual healer so 
works upon the mind as to divert the thought and 
resultantly the vital fluids from the base to the front 
of the head and thereby diminishes the pressure upon 
the lower organs by stimulating the higher. 

You only think about and desire to gratify certain 
propensities when your thought, not being centered 
where it should be is free to roam into forbidden chan- 



246 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

nels. Under no circumstances paint pictures of dis- 
ease, conjure up no horrible pictures of despair and 
death ; do nothing to arouse fear, on the contrary 
work to quell it if aroused already ; for remember, 
those who abstain from evil courses outwardly through 
fear of consequences are not reformed, but continuing 
to love evil are still under its dominion in thought and, 
being so, may at any moment break out into some 
ebulition on the surface. If you are called upon to 
treat a young man for such habits as drinking, smok- 
ing, or gambling, if he is causing distress to his parents 
by riotous living, and you are anxious of inducing him 
to reform, commence right by setting an excellent 
example in your own conduct ; your own life must be 
inviolate; you must make no concession to error by 
allowing yourself even for an instant to take a single 
glass of wine or even one cigar or cigarette ; no end of 
harm is done by patronizing evil on a small scale and 
then condemning it wholesale. Life is made up of 
little things, and you can never afford to do a little 
harm and excuse yourself because it is a little, for that 
little is not only enough to prevent you from rescuing 
its victim, it is also sufficient to drag you down to a 
lower level. Having set your example of righteous- 
ness and continuing to set it, you may, if questioned 
on the matter of drinking or any other vice, express 
your own views very decisively ; let there be no mis- 
take as to the attitude taken by yourself on such mat- 
ters, but if you are not questioned work in silent 
thought to convince your patient that his conduct is 
erroneous ; think toward him what you could not say 
without being thought unpleasant or fanatical ; many 
persons will not hear a truth in so many words without 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 247 

defying it, while if you convey a thought to them they 
are at once conscious of an impression conveyed, to 
their mind, and the thought coming to them in such a 
form that they cannot distinguish it from an impres- 
sion or suggestion of their own ; they are ready to 
think about it, submit it to reason and often will 
embrace it, as it satisfies them when submitted to their 
judgment that it is worthy to be followed. 

We have known many instances where silent men- 
tal treatment has cured intemperance and many an- 
other vile and disgusting habit ; one case which came 
prominently before us a short time ago we will here 
introduce as a typical instance. A young man a little 
over twenty years of age had fallen in with bad com- 
panions, and being easily led was soon made a victim 
of drink and other vices, occasioning much pain to his 
mother, who unfortunately bemoaned his vices without 
being able to help him to abandon them. A happy 
thought struck her ; a gentleman about forty years of 
age, of the most exemplary habits, a handsome man, 
of pleasing manners and generally a favorite with 
younger people, was coming to the city where she and 
her son were living, and as he was seeking accommo- 
dations in a private family where he might have pri- 
vacy and quiet for important studies and literary 
work, she invited him to her home and made a special 
request to him to accept her hospitality, telling him 
her painful situation and expressing both a hope and 
a conviction that he would help her son to give up his 
evil courses and begin a new life. The gentleman ac- 
cepted the invitation, but very decidedly declined to 
say anything to his hostess 1 son on the subject of intem- 
perance or any form of dissipation; his own conduct 



248 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

at the table and everywhere else on all occasions was 
of course exemplary in the highest degree ; but the 
young man's mother was afraid mere example would 
not convert her son, and after two or three days, when 
she had had, as she thought, time to observe that no 
change for the better was taking place in his habits, 
she communicated her feelings very plainly in a private 
conversation with her guest; to her disappointment 
all the answer he made to her heart-rending entreaties 
that he would step in and save her boy, was an offer to 
take the culprit to the theater or any other respectable 
place of amusement whenever the young gentleman 
felt disposed to accept his company. From that day 
forth, however, matters began to take a decided turn ; 
the young man accompanied his older friend to the 
theater one night, to a concert another, and so on, re- 
turning every evening at a respectable hour, having 
had nothing stronger than water or a cup of choc- 
olate to drink ; he began to appear regularly at break- 
fast, with no unhealthy flush or pallor on his counte- 
nance, no suspicious redness about the eyes, and no 
distracted manner of any kind. So far his mind and 
time had been pleasantly occupied in business during 
the day and innocent amusement at night. 

After about a week of this better mode of living 
the crisis arrived; one evening the gentleman with 
whom he had been passing his evenings so respectably 
was unable to accompany him anywhere, as very im- 
portant business of a peremptory and private nature 
commanded his attention; with many misgivings the 
mother saw her son prepare to go out alone, as he had 
done for so long previous to the preceding week and 
usually with such disastrous consequences. During the 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 240 

whole of the evening up till midnight, the anxious 
mother worried over her son and conjured up the most 
distressful mental visions of his probable whereabouts. 
Just as she was on the point of retiring to her room 
for the night, her guest returned and astonished her 
by uttering in an abrupt and almost domineering tone 
the following sentence : " Duty compels me to inform 
you, madam, that if you persist in holding your son in 
error, he can never be reformed ; go to bed and leave 
him in charge of the Almighty." Without another 
word except a courteous "good night," her visitor left 
her to her somewhat startled meditations, and retired 
to his own chamber. The lady could not sleep ; she 
partly undressed, and then feeling terribly uneasy, at- 
tired herself in a thick wrapper and tried to read. 
Either the book was dull or her nerves too unsteady to 
permit of reading ; the words addressed to her by her 
guest continued to ring in her ears. But what does he 
mean by "holding my son in error?" if he were in 
my place, if he had an only son of his own, ruining 
himself by evil courses, I venture to assume he would 
be almost as distressed as I am, unless beneath all his 
religious and moral exterior he has a heart of stone, 
callously indifferent to the welfare of all beside himself, 
ruminated the unhappy woman. 

Presently a singular, feeling of mingled hope and 
calm stole over her, she "went to bed and soon fell 
asleep, and throughout her slumbers a vision seemed 
ever before her of an unseen hand supporting her son 
in some dangerous place, and at last causing him to 
dash a glass of liquor untasted from his lips. At 
breakfast next morning, her son met her with a smil- 
ing countenance and gave her indeed a joyful piece of 



250 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

news. " Mother," he said, " last night about twelve 
o'clock, after visiting a theater with one of my old 
companions, he urged me as he always does to take a 
drink; we went into a fashionable saloon and called 
for iced champagne ; he drank freely of it and seemed 
to think ^t excellent ; what I tasted I thought was bad, 
whereupon I drank a sip from my friend's glass and lie 
took a sip from mine ; strange to say, both tasted 
equally good to him and equally bad to me ; thinking 
my stomach might be a little out of order I let it go, 
and not feeling particularly well I refused his invita- 
tion to go elsewhere with him and wended my way 
homeward. On my way home, just for the sake of 
experiment, I went into another saloon and called for 
a glass of ale ; that tasted even worse than the cham- 
pagne, and as I asked myself whatever could be the 
matter with me, I heard a voice, whether in my ear or 
only in my fancy, I could not make out, saying dis- 
tinctly, 'You never liked liquor, you never will, you 
never can ; be a man and never degrade yourself by 
pretending you like what you hate anymore.' Just 
about that time I thought of you, mother, you came 
up vividly before me, I seemed to hear and see you and 

Mr. together, you were talking excitedly and I 

caught the sentence, ' You must not hold your son in 
error' ; directly I got home, I went to bed and to 
sleep; this morning I woke up feeling completely 
cured of all my taste for liquor, and do you know, 
mother, with G-od's help I feel certain I shall never 
drink again." 

The young man began at once to live up to his 
good resolution, and there is no need to suppose that 
he has had any return to his old evil habits. 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 251 

We have given this little anecdote a place in this 
lecture, not on account of its singularity, for many 
and many a similar instance might be quoted, but be- 
cause it seems to us to embody the entire principle 
of spiritual healing, and to arouse the very questions 
we need to answer before we take our leave of each 
other. Please to observe the method of silent treat- 
ment adopted by the metaphysician ; he studiously re- 
frained from all allusion in conversation to the silent 
work he was doing so effectually, and here we have a 
lesson for all teachers which most of them sadly need 
to learn ; you cannot always tell persons of their faults 
or remonstrate with them on their doings without 
being noted as a bore and a nuisance ; you arouse hos- 
tility immediately you assume the role of censor, J)ut 
what you cannot say you can assuredly think', the 
great advantage of thinking good advice instead of 
speaking it is that by the former course you appeal di- 
rect to your pupil's sense of right, and by the latter 
you awaken opposition, and encourage or at least chal- 
lenge controversy 

Metaphysical treatments are not mesmeric for they 
are not subjugatory ; you do not will another person 
to do as you desire, you do not tell him to obey you, 
neither do you seek to influence him to follow a blind 
instinct or impression ; you acknowledge in him a rea- 
soning principle, a faculty of understanding, a moral 
principle to which truth can appeal, and in addressing 
that principle you do not ask him to agree with you, 
to take you as an authority ; you succeed in showing 
him the error of his ways by holding up a mirror to 
him in mind in which he can see the image of truth 
reflected; he instantly contrasts this picture of truth 



252 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

with his usual course of error, to the advantage of the 
former and the disadvantage of the latter. 

Every one has enough moral principle and enough 
good judgment to guide him if it is only appealed to, 
just as the occupants of a theater gallery can always be 
touched by the portrayal of noble sentiment on the 
stage ; and all good actors know how powerfully they 
can appeal to the noblest sentiments of humanity by 
letting goodness make its own way to the hearts of the 
"rabble" So every true healer who is a sound teacher 
of morals must understand how to reach the inmost 
convictions of his pupil and lead him thereby to desist 
from evil courses, as his own inmost self tells him to 
sin no more, and shows him how to live righteously in 
future. 

Observe the simplicity in mode of treatment 
adopted by the hero of our anecdote, — he was on no 
occasion anything other than an agreeable friend ; his 
influence was exerted entirely in silence ; and in these 
days of mind-reading experiments it should not seem 
incredible to an enlightened public that a strong, de- 
cisive, persistent thought is far more potent and elo- 
quent than any words. Words are addressed to the 
outermost degree of human consciousness, and there- 
fore appeal directly to the mortal mind which at once 
raises objections to the truth-; this mortal mind is car- 
nal and at enmity with God, it is the serpent of temp- 
tation with which all have to contend. Mortal mind 
uses words and brings forth sophistry wherewith to 
confound truth; it is the adversary within, the foe 
in the household, the traitor in the camp with which 
perpetual warfare must be waged. 

To conquer this mortal mind immortal spirit must 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 253 

be appealed to, and this can be far more readily done 
in silence than by conversation, as talking gives oppor- 
tunity for mortal mind to assert its claims in a dusty 
cloud of words which it raises to obscure truth and 
befog the mind of the one who is proclaiming it. As 
the cuttle-fish throws around it a stream of ink, black- 
ening the waters all about, and in that ' inky torrent 
conceals itself and its own designs, so does the sophis- 
tical intellect of man endeavor to hide its fallacies and 
gloss over its false reasonings by specious sophistry in 
word. To answer back in thought is far more difficult, 
as thought without a conversational envelope has to 
make an impression, if it be a thought of truth, upon 
a purer and more abiding principle in man than the 
shifting, mortal intellect. Whenever a person like the 
gentleman we have introduced to y our notice as our 
illustration desires earnestly to reform an erring intel- 
lect and lead one who is hastening to ruin back from 
the brink of destruction to paths of safety and honor, 
he necessarily feels his only way is to appeal to that 
side of his companion's nature which can and will 
respond to the call of truth and genuine reason. 

While it is true enough that the carnal appetite of 
man craves sensuous indulgence, it is far more true, as 
it will remain true in the case of every human soul 
forever, that the immortal spirit of man loves right- 
eousness and hates iniquity ; to appeal to that within 
man himself which loves goodness is the only success- 
ful plan of reformation. The reason why so many 
well- written works on physiology, hygiene, etc., often 
fail to accomplish the good designed by their authors 
is because of their absolute externalism; they appeal 
to human selfishness, and selfishness is in and of itself 



254 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

an error of mortal mind, one indeed of the first magni- 
tude. No creature wants to suffer; rats always leave 
a sinking vessel ; but where is the nobility, where the 
high moral purpose in a mere animal instinct of self- 
preservation, from which proceeds such maxims as 
"every one for himself," and "look out for number 
one"? Such aphorisms are the inevitable outgrowth 
of self-love; they spring from a development of the 
instinct of self-preservation without any corresponding 
development of the moral faculties, and as the moral 
faculties are the only ones whose development can give 
to their possessor power to effectually resist and over- 
come temptation, "hell is paved w r ith good resolu- 
tions" arising out of a selfish desire to live purely for 
no other reason than because a penalty attaches to 
immorality and folly. To resist the encroachments of 
the sensual nature, to be strong to resist temptation, 
comes from an unfoldment of the inner principle of 
virtue within the life of man ; and we care not who 
differs from us or what opposition our statement may 
prov r oke from materialistic minds, we affirm unequivo- 
cally, without fear of successful reply from any quarter, 
no one can live an outwardly virtuous life in all par- 
ticulars unless guided by some strong moral impulse. 

As long as evil desires are allowed to remain in 
mind, so long will they struggle to express themselves 
outwardly in word and deed; but reach the seat of the 
malady, destroy the root of the poisonous plant, and 
then, without taking the trouble to interfere with the 
] eaves and branches, they will one by one dry up and 
drop away ; as long as there is vigor in the root of a 
tree it will press its way up and out spite of all obsta- 
cles, as trees have been known after they were cut 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 255 

down to force their way through floors and ceilings 
and destroy property built over their supposed dead 
roots. Let any evil propensity remain unchecked in 
thought, let any carnal desire linger in the mind, let 
the affections continue to cling ever so slightly to an 
olden error, and you are never safe from yielding to 
any temptation which may present itself from without. 

It is not the saloon but the love of strong drink in 
man which occasions intemperance. We hate saloons, 
and are in favor of prohibitory legislation. We look 
with disgust upon any law which sanctions and legal- 
izes vice, still most certain are we that outward legisla- 
tion can never abolish an evil. We rely solely on 
intellectual and moral suasion as our weapons of de- 
fense against legalized iniquity. How come the infa- 
mous laws to be laws? How come those men into 
power who can be bought and sold by saloonkeepers ? 
how comes it that the saloon can buy up the votes of 
loafers? How comes it that the ballot in many a hand 
is a curse rather than a blessing? Surely the answer 
is plain. There is a devil in man, or an outside 
tempter would have no power at all. To fear the devil 
is to acknowledge the devil within you. Cast out the 
unclean spirit, the evil tempter within, and Ave care not 
how strong nor how numerous the hosts of darkness 
may be, when any tempter approaches you from with- 
out, if there is nothing in you to respond to his appeal 
he has to retire balked and discomfited. 

Demoniacal possession in olden times and obsession 
in the present clay must be exploded as a fallacy in all 
other senses than the one just indicated. Why should 
you be subject to the dominion of "evil spirits"? is 
there not an Infinite Deity? are there not legions of 



256 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

angels perpetually encompassing us ? is not evil merely 
a transitory shadow, while good is an eternal reality ? 
If everything that has ever been said by theologians 
and magicians concerning evil spirits is less than the 
truth, if the hosts of darkness are more numerous than 
the stars in the firmament or the sand grains on the 
seashore, even then we need not fear, for greater, infi- 
nitely greater, must be the power of light than that of 
darkness, infinitely more numerous the hosts of good 
than those of evil. 

In its old esoteric sense the Garden of Eden legend, 
introducing the talking serpent as the tempter and 
seducer of Eve and Adam, only tells the tale of how 
man is by his own desires enticed. The serpent at 
Corinth in the days of Paul was the same old wily 
snake which first led man to transgress the commands 
of the Most High; nothing in either case but man's 
lower nature struggling for ascendency over the 
higher, nothing but inverted love and then perverted 
intellect led woman and man from pure happiness to 
misery, from the tranquil joys and restful work of 
Paradise to the thorny, barrier-bestrewn earth where 
through constant conflict alone they can reach the 
haven of safety and repose. 

Nirvana, the kingdom of heaven, and all other 
names and- titles signifying a realm of perfect bliss, 
apply to states rather than to places ; we must conquer 
the desire for sin and then no enemy can hurt us; we 
must thrust from our affections anger, jealousy and all 
impurity, and then with nothing to attract whatever 
evil there may be around us, we shall be untouched by 
harm in the midst of a million pestilences, and like 
the three holy children of old, or Daniel in the den of 



LECTURE BY W. J. C0LV1LLE. 257 

lions, remain secure, no matter how the beasts may 
rage or the flames mount high around us. As a life- 
boat breasts the ocean storm, while vessels sink around 
it, as a cork floats peacefully on the bosom of troubled 
waters while lead immediately sinks to the bottom of 
the ocean, so does a soul emancipated from the heavy 
alloy of mortal passion pass safely through every form 
of tribulation and disease, fearing neither bacteria nor 
moral evil. Metaphysicians are often grossly misrep- 
resented by those who have never taken the trouble to 
study metaphysics, because the mortal mind in error 
cannot comprehend the truth of spirit. The principles 
of spiritual science are pearls which neither dogs nor 
swine can appreciate, and to such creatures they should 
not be offered. The "dog" is the mortal mind of man, 
not necessarily evil, but spiritually unenlightened, that 
state of human consciousness which apprehends sensu- 
ous things only, and can form no thought of spirit. 
The " dog " element in man is materialistic, agnostic, 
unspi ritual, and therefore it is but waste of time to 
present spiritual ideas to that aspect of human nature ; 
argument is often utterly unavailing because addressed 
to the mortal mind only ; however sound it may be, it 
is like the sun beating against the solid walls of a 
building, while the spiritual perception is the only win- 
dow through which it can be admitted. The " swine " 
represent a much lower condition still, even a state of 
deliberate opposition to the truth, a hatred of right- 
eousness, and whenever a healer comes across the 
"swine" in his patients he can do nothing for them 
unless he can oust them from their sanctuary and 
drown them in the waters of endless oblivion. 

To drop metaphors and speak so plainly that no 



258 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

child need misunderstand or fail to comprehend our 
meaning, we forcibly insist upon this one fact as essen- 
tial to all comprehension of spiritual science, viz., the 
utter impossibility of healing any in truth, unless you 
can so touch the divine within them that they them- 
selves arise out of their graves of error, and casting 
away the love of evil, work out their own salvation. 

God is man's ever-present Savior, but God is not 
confined to any portion of the universe ; you come to 
God when you find your own soul, for the logos within 
you, the divine nature which you all possess, is the 
medium of communication between man and the Infi- 
nite Spirit. We are often asked if we should advise 
our patients to discontinue the use of medicines stimu- 
lants, crutches, and other foibles resorted to when mor- 
tal mind, turning away from spirit to sense, endeavors 
to find in matter the life which dwells only in spirit. 
Our reply is, you can only err if you forcibly remove 
from your patients a prop or leading string before he 
is ready to walk without it. If you feel your patients 
are doing wrong in resorting to material assistance, 
and you wish to break them off entirely from material 
aids, you must work in mind to induce them to see a 
just reason for giving up the props on which they have 
been accustomed to lean. Yery often persons return 
to old errors, taking up again with material remedies 
because never having lost their faith in their efficacy, 
though temporarily they discontinued their use to 
please the healer, they still feel they would be bet- 
ter off with than without them. Never take away 
liquor, tobacco, bromides, chloral, or any detestable 
weed, drug, or medicine, but work rather to convince 
your patient its employment is a degradation. In treat- 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 259 

ing for the belief in the stimulating virtues of alco- 
hol, you must argue down the theory that alcohol is a 
tonic ; give your patients to understand that the exhil- 
arating influence he feels is due to mental excitation 
and not to the liquor. This exhilarated feeling you 
can mentally produce ; you may give him colored 
water and let him think it is a powerful medicine just 
once, but no more, for the sake of a demonstra- 
tion. When once he perceives that mind, not alcohol, 
revived him and gave him a feeling of renewed health 
and youthful buoyancy, the belief in ardent spirit as a 
builder-up of wasted nerve force is crushed forever. 

In treating for the love of tobacco and for belief in 
its narcotic virtues, let your patient see that when you 
exert your mind upon him you can produce in him all 
the feelings he formerly attributed to the weed. This 
demonstration ought to suffice to prove that virtue lies 
in mind, and not in a plant. When anaesthetics are in 
constant use to provoke sleep, when hyperdermic in- 
jections are resorted to to relieve pain, you may admin- 
ister simple water, and the effect will be the same. 
The hold of morphine, laudanum, or any other drug 
over the mind will thus be broken and the truth be 
vindicated that belief, mental action, not matter occa- 
sioned the results desired. 

When a surgical operation is performed, the meta- 
physician should be in close attendance to direct the 
thought of the patient to immortal spirit away from 
mortal flesh ; if ether, cocaine, or nitrous oxide gas 
can deaden sensibility and thus release from pain, 
mind can do vastly more than any drug, and if at first 
you resort to what may seem the subterfuge of pre- 
senting a counterfeit anaesthetic to the patient, it will 



2G0 LECTURE BY W. J. C0LVILLE. 

be only for the sake of demonstrating truth that you 
ever condescended to simulate the practices of mortal 
error. Bread pills are not honest if constantly sold at 
an apothecary's, for the only use they are in any case 
is to prove that when taken in the belief that they are 
strongly medicated, they produce medical results. 

Having once proved the truth that mind alone pro- 
duces sensation and gives fancied potency ' to matter, 
you should never condescend to play tricks with your 
patient in the futile endeavor to demonstrate truth by 
acting a lie. If a person gives medicine conscientiously 
in the belief that it will do good, he is no imposter, and 
throws out no bad influence. Honest doctors of all 
schools do some good, but the cunning trickster, who 
gives his patient bread pills and colored water year m 
and year out, keeping him always on his hands, instead 
of being an approximation to a true metaphysician, is 
a mental malpractitioner, using so-called remedies to 
gull others, while he knows himself that mind, not 
matter, is the source w r hence their reputed etiicacy 
proceeds. If you reveal to your patient the truth of 
being gradually, as he is able to bear it, making no rash 
disclosures, shocking no prejudices violently, but work- 
ing constancy to undermine the foundations of error, 
you will find that he begins to ask you questions, evi- 
dently prompted by the silent treatment you have 
given. Argue all cases silently at first, and then con- 
verse as soon as your patient's mind shows a disposi- 
tion to talk on spiritual science. 

In treating a child or any one who is under strong 
mesmeric influence, you must treat the mother, or 
whoever is the keeper of the child's mind, at the same 
time, working earnestly to unfold the child's individual 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLV1LLE. 201 

intelligence ; in the case of one who is mesmerized, if 
you can reach the operator, command him to deliver 
up his prey ; if one is injuring another, hold before 
them the truth that liberty is the prerogative of all 
God's children, so as to shame them out of practicing 
the infamy of mental slaveholding. 

In the case of an idiot, idiocy being only arrested 
mental development, work to dispel fear and belief in 
mental unsoundness in the minds of all who surround 
the idiot. Idiots, no matter how many years they may 
have lived, are only grown-up children, like a charac- 
ter in Dickens, who, though twenty-eight years of age, 
imagining herself only ten, acted as though she were 
no older. Begin with an idiot or imbecile person as 
though you were instructing a child ; forget the age of 
your patient altogether and conscientiously impart 
instruction as to an infant. With one violently mad, 
remember violent insanity is brought on by indulgence 
of the passions, furious temper, and perhaps most of 
all by the perpetual belief of those around, holding the 
sufferer in fear and dread. 

Whenever you are asked to take a case in any hos- 
pital or lunatic asylum, make friends with the officials 
if you possibly can, do your utmost to secure a bright, 
hopeful attendant for your patient, and wherever cir- 
cumstances permit, have the sufferer removed to quiet 
quarters. Change of air and scene, so constantly rec- 
ommended by physicians, means only change of men- 
tal atmosphere, for if travel produces no distraction 
for the mind, no benefit can be derived from circum- 
navigating the globe. When a metaphysician is so sit- 
uated as to be able to do so, let him take one or two 
patients in his own house, that they may enjoy the 



262 LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 

benefits to be derived from living in a sphere of 
thought which is not loaded with fears and beliefs of 
disease. When you go out to treat, it is well to treat 
in your patient's own room, which should always be a 
quiet, though a cheerful one, not necessarily pervaded 
by a death-like stillness, which is often anything but 
beneficial, but removed as far as possible from all 
discordant noises. Cheerful conversation, agreeable 
occupation, anything to divert the mind from disease, 
is good, and everyone who carries brightness into a 
sick chamber helps to make it well. Nervous people 
who sympathize with error must never be admited to a 
patient's room, and nurses above all people must be 
chosen on account of their cheerful disposition and 
good moral character. Hospital training is no qualifi- 
cation, for in many instances it either produces careless 
indifference or else a spirit of predicting evil. 

As life is now and ever, in spirit, and as we must all 
of us wake up some day from our dream of mortal il- 
lusions and acknowledge understandingly the simple 
truth of spirit, death should never be feared or recog- 
nized, for we must all drop the mortal body sooner or 
later, and whenever its work is done let it go pain- 
lessly, while the immortal spirit is freed from limita- 
tion. God is well and so are we, is an ever-present 
truth. Truth prophecies no recovery, it deals in no fu- 
tures, it proclaims to all mankind, You are well, even 
if you do not know it. The soul is never sick, never 
sins and never suffers, and we shall be all spiritual 
throughout eternity, having dropped the mortal mind 
with all its painful memories. 

Whatever is truly good and enjoyable is eternal, 
whatever conduces to real happiness lives forever. All 



LECTURE BY W. J. COLVILLE. 2G3 

true unselfish affection is immortal, but whatever is of 
the shadow and darkness of mortal misjudgment can 
endure no longer than till the light of truth illumines 
the understanding, and forever puts to flight the shades 
of error. Truth is mighty and must prevail. Be this 
our motto; no perhaps about it, absolute certainty of 
victory, unswerving confidence in the almightiness of 
truth is the only armor which can protect us in our en- 
counters with evil. If the battle seems long and pa- 
tience is sorely tried, if relapses occur and the good 
work seems to make but little progress, we should at- 
tribute seeming failure only to our own weakness, and 
with redoubled energy press on to certain victory. 
"With malice toward none and good will to all man- 
kind, as champions of truth equipped in the love 
and understanding of it, we may all treat successfully 
first ourselves and then others ; but self-treatment 
when successful is never selfish, so we must seek first 
to bless others, and in blessing them we shall assuredly 
be blest ourselves, 



INVOCATION. 



ETERNAL and Infinite Spirit, Life, Light, Wisdom, 
Love, Truth, Justice ! Thou Soul of the Universe, 
Creator, Sustainer, and Enlightener of Mankind, we do 
not pray to thee because we think that our petitions can 
improve thy laws or alter thy designs ; Ave do not ask 
thee to ward off from us any trial, suffering or tempta- 
tion which in thy wisdom thou seest to be best for us. 
We would not ask thee to exalt us above our fellows, or 
make the lands we love the best, the fairest and most 
prosperous beneath the sun. But Ave will implore thee 
to stir up within us all generous resolves and virtuous 
inclinations ; we will unfold the petals of our souls to 
catch the sunshine, and open the windows of our minds 
as best we may to let in those airs from heaven Avhich 
stir us sometimes like mighty hurricanes, and again 
like gentle zephyrs avoo us into neAAmess of life and 
fuller conformity with thy divine behest. We would 
welcome the storm clouds of adversity equally with the 
soft rains of summer days and the gentle dews of sum- 
mer nights ; Ave would praise thee for the 
lightning and the thunder, the roar of the ocean and 
the strife Avhich causes men's hearts to quake with fear, 
as Avell as for the sweet singing of the nightingales and 
the loveliness and perfume of the choicest floAvers ; for 
Ave can trace thee in lire and Hood as well as in pros- 
perity and calm, and rejoice to confine ourselves and all 
whom we love unreservedly into thine all-gracious 

264 



invocation. 265 

keeping, feeling sure that in birth or death, in joy or 
sorrow, in commotion or repose, thou art working for 
the best good of all thy creatures, and cans't leave one 
to perish or mourn eternally, away from the knowl- 
edge of thy truth and the realization of thy love. We 
are but frail and erring, and thou art infinitely just and 
pure. Our perfection can never be like thine, an infi- 
nite perfection, but as each separate blossom in the 
garden or the field may be perfect after its kind and yet 
resemble nothing but its own species, so may we, each 
and all, learn so to live that in our spheres and degrees 
we ma} T be as perfect as all our strength and all our 
opportunity will permit. May we ever keep before us 
the noblest models, cherish the loftiest ideas, pursue 
the heavenliest goals ; and may we be content with noth- 
ing short of that justice which is as wise as it is loving, 
and compassionate as it is wise ; may we learn to recon- 
cile mercy with justice to our own understandings, and 
know that to thee they are in eternal agreement. So 
may our influence upon all with whom we mingle, and 
whose lives we in any wa} T effect, be an influence for 
good only, in this and in every stage of our existence, 
now and in eternity. We ask for every blessing for the 
sake of that humanity in whose welfare we would find 
the highest glory. 



THE MOKNING NOON AND EVENING OF LIFE. 



IMPROMPTU POEM. 
Subject Chosen by Audience in Oakland, Cal. 



Morning, when the day grows bright, 
When awakes the glorious light, 
When the shadows pass away, 
When the world awakes to day. 

Morning, beautiful and fair, 
Your sweet splendors everywhere 
Fill us with ecstatic hope ; 
Thou the chain of night hast broke. 

Thou art sweet and passing fair, 
Morning beam and frosty air, 
Thou dost drive the darksome night 
Far away by thy bright light. 

Morning, o'er the distant hill, 
We behold thy waking rill, 
And we know that noon will come, 
But thou first must win thy home. 

On the mountain top so high, 
Morning breaks o'er all the sky, 
And the prophets standing there, 
Gazing through the cold, clear air, 
See the rising of ihe sun, — 
Day already hath begun. 

Those who early wake and toil 
Up the mountain, on that soil 
Far above the valleys low, 
See the day begin to glow. 
266 



IMPROMPTU POEM. 267 

While those in a lower place 
Turn their eyes toward the face 
Of the east where day is born, 
But see not the breaking morn. 

So those holy souls aflame 

With the light of love — who claim 

To be pioneers of right, 

Who stand foremost in the fight, 

Those can tell of coming day, 

Rolling night's dark cloud away. 

They upon the mountain stand, 
And across a darkened land 
They behold in purple east 
Morning's rich and glorious feast. 

So, if any soul shall say, 
I behold the breaking day, 
The glad morning of the truth. 
The new coming of love's youth, — 

Those who see it first must be 
Up, alive, and actively 
Climb where'er the truth doth lead, 
To the point where o'er the mead 
They can see the coming day 
Break in glory o'er the way. 

Lovely morning all so bright ! 
Breezes soft and day's young light ! 
Morn is childhood, passing dear, 
Morn is youth, exempt from fear. 

Morn brings hope, a sweet young grace ; 
Knowledge comes — it then gives place 
To a brighter, nobler hour — 
Noonday shines in fuller power. 

Come to morning's hill apace, — 
Day grows brighter, new-born grace, 
Added light and added love, 
Stream from fount of truth above. 



2G8 IMPROMPTU POEM. 

Noonday splendor, when thou'rt here 
All the shadows disappear ; 
Noonday splendor, thou art love, 
Truth divine from spheres above. 

Thou fruition's glorious hour, 
Thou midsummer with thy bower 
Filled with flowers and beauteous things, 
With the stir of radiant wings. 

But in distant sky, behold, 
After all the glorious gold, 
After all the many flowers, 
After all the charmed bowers, 
After all the light of day, 
Evening follows, cold and gray. 

For the night again must come, 
All the birds be gathered home, 
All the flowers must shut their eyes — 
Night again with dull surprise 
Follows with a sleep profound, 
Hushing Nature's loveliest sound. 

Has the daylight been in vain ? 

Has the turmoil and the pain, 

Has the light and heat been naught ? 

Has the sun its battle fought, 

Only to retire at length, 

Shorn of all its heat and strength ? 

Night has come indeed ; but we 
In the night-time clearly see 
Million worlds in yonder sky, 
Beaming bright, benign, and high. 

If the evening ne'er should come, 
If the day should ne'er go home, 
And the sun retire to rest ; 
Sinking in the purple west, 
Then you would not see the stars 
Shining through the empyrean bars. 



IMPROMPTU POEM. 269 

So when night falls over man, 

So when God's mysterious plan 

Doth ordain that flowers shall fade, 

And your lives in darksome shade 

Of bereavement for a while 

Rest where day no more doth smile, — 

Then the many stars in heaven 
For the night-time all are given ; 
And the sorrow and the shade 
Show the heavens with light arrayed. 

And the many stars of love, 
In their glorious home above, 
Shine upon you through the night, 
Turning darkness into light. 

Then when you've the lesson learned 
Which so many hearts have spurned, 
When the night-time all is o'er, 
Then the morning breaks once more. 

You have seen the stars at night, 
Then when shines the new-born light, 
'Tis the new light far above 
Earthly death, and therein love, 
Glad new morning, bright new day, 
Breaks in light across your way. 
Lo ! th' experience of the night 
Doth prepare for morning light. 

So 'twill ever be on earth, 
Alternating death and birth. 
So with morning, noon and eve, 
Songs of pleasure we will weave. 
Treasured wheresoe'er they go, 
Life's deep river thus must flow. 
Onward, forward to the sea, 
To the great Eternity. 



270 IMPROMPTU POEM. 

Morning, noon and night will lead 
Over briars and flowery mead 
To the glorious land at last 
Where the day is never past ; 
Where the sun and all the stars 
You can see ; where all the bars 
Of your senses, darkness here, 
For all ages disappear. 

Glorious morning ne'er to die ! 
Glorious fount of ecstacy ! 
Beatific vision blest 
In that world of perfect rest 
And divinest work — where man 
At the last, by God's good plan, 
Shall he perfect ; unto thee 
All our eyes turn lovingly. 
With the red of love divine, 
Wisdom's golden light shall shine 
And the blue of truth will blend 
With the white, which ne'er can end. 
Purity, this is the whole, 
This reveals th' eternal soul. 

Blue of truth, upon life's flag, 
Red of love must never lag ; 
But one color yet } t ou need, — 
Wisdom's golden light to lead 
To the perfect white divine 
Of pure light ; in deepest mine 
Of affection for the truth. 
Wisdom, love with ageless youth, 
All our souls must turn to thee, 
Eternal One, eternally. 



THE EDUCATOR, 

CAUSE AND CURE OF ALL DISEASE. 

A work of over 700 pages, just issued. 

By Rosa Cadman Congar, M.H., and Dr. M. E. Congar. 

This work is made up of Twenty-four Chapters, Second Part or 
Supplement. 

Chapter I. — Introductory, by Dr. Congar. 

Chapter II. — Causes : Ignorance and neglect. 

Chapter III. — Remedies: Innumerable and simple; should be as 
varied in application as are the faces of the human family. 

Chapter IV. — Lungs, Stomach and Circulation: These vital 
organs and their functions duly considered. 

Chapter V. — Heart and Liver: Their importance as vital organs 
considered. 

Chapter VI. — Constipation and Piles : This one chapter is worth 
the price of the book to every family. 

Chapter VII. — Baths, Gymnastics and Ventilation : The les- 
sons taught in this division are all vital and important. 

Chapter VIII. — Hygienic Food: If you desire perfect health, 
you must make a careful study and live the teachings of this 
chapter. 

Chapter IX. — Physiology of Marriage: Advice and counsel that 
parents should not ignore. 

Chapter X. — Fevers and Inflammations: Only signals of dis- 
tress; friends, and not enemies. 

Chapter XI. — Bowels, Kidneys and Bladder: If diseased, be- 
cause of bad treatment. 

Chapter XII. — Sunshine and Shadow: Important, very im- 
portant health requisites. 

Chapter XIII. — Dress : The subject dressed as only woman can 
dress it. 

Chapter XIV. — Colds, Catarrh, Consumption, Bronchitis, 
Asthma and Indigestion: Causes shown, and simple remedies 
prescribed which have never failed. 

Chapter XV. — Useful Recipes: Condensed items; necessities in 
every household. 



Chapter XVI. — Health Crystals : Illustrates the power of poetry 
and gems of thought, to heal and uplift the sick and depressed. 

Chapter XVII. — Pregnancy: Parturition without pain considered. 
The subject treated by a mother, having had large sxperience 
and observation. 

Chapter XVIII. — Children, their Care at Birth r.nd During 
Childhood : Thirty pages devoted to this important subject. 

Chapter XIX. — Diseases of Women and Children : Women are 
everywhere suffering from ignorance of the laws of their being. 
A careful study will be of great advantage to both mother and 
child. 

Chapter XX. — Testimony of Fifty Eminent M.D's., Profes- 
sors and Chemists : We ask all who think they are safe in rely- 
ing upon medicines when sick, to read this chapter, of the 
" Educator " before any other. 

Chapter XXI. — Tobacco and Alcoholic Liquors: We only ask a 
candid, unprejudiced perusal of this division of the work. 

Chapter XXII. — Health Hash: A hundred or more brief hints 
hashed up for the good of all. 

Chapter XXIII. — Menstruation and Change of Life: Important 
facts for old and young. 

Chapter XXIV. — Miscellaneous Diseases, Remedies and Sug- 
gestions : The suggestions will uplift and strengthen your lives. 
Read every word of w this closing chapter. 



SUPPLEMENT OR PART II. 

TWELVE CLASS LECTURES 

BY THE EMINENT TEACHER OF BOSTON, 

W. J. COLVILLE. 

SUBJECT : 

METAPHYSICAL HEALING. 

No advanced student of science can ignore these teachings. 
Believer or doubter will be well paid for a careful perusal of the 
Supplement. 

The Educator is just what every practical metaphysician should 
study. 

TERMS TO AGENTS. 

Unusual inducements are offered agents, both men and women, 
in every State, County, City and Township in the United States. 

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO, 

Lock Box 620, Ciiicaoo, III. 



H 244 83 



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